by Gwen Bristow
But when she told Kester, he was thrilled. He immediately told everybody he knew, with the artless joy of a little boy promised a bicycle. He went up to the attic and brought down the carved rosewood cradle where the infant Larnes had kicked and squalled for a hundred years, and set it up in the old nursery six months before it would be needed. Eleanor’s new acquaintances called with congratulations, bringing presents of silver thimbles and yards of muslin, which, as she couldn’t sew, she put away in a drawer, and ordered a layette from New Orleans. Altogether, in spite of her amused and sometimes annoyed protests she found herself relegated to the place of a Brave Little Woman, and to her surprise she discovered it was not an unpleasant place to be. It was agreeable to be worshiped and waited on, and to receive Kester’s delighted tributes. He brought her anything his eye fell upon with favor, without regard for whether or not she would have any use for it, and apparently believing that she was now too delicate to move he had an extension telephone installed by her bed to save her going downstairs to answer rings. As if this were not enough, he asked her nearly every day if she wanted anything, so eagerly that Eleanor was at last emboldened to make a request that had been lying in the back of her mind ever since they came home from their honeymoon trip.
Kester’s untidiness irritated her and she had observed that her endless picking up irritated him. She was beginning to foresee that if they continued to occupy the same bedroom their mutual annoyance was going to result in a storm. “I don’t want to quarrel with you about anything so unimportant,” she pled, “but I can’t, Kester, I can’t live in a place that always looks as if the Chinese army had just marched through! If there was no help for it I’d try to be patient, but in a house with nine bedrooms I don’t see why I have to. Would you mind very much if I had a room of my own?”
They were undressing. Kester’s shirt was dangling from the chandelier and the floor was strewn with his undergarments. Eleanor stood in the middle of the room surveying its confusion with a look of despair. Kester began to laugh.
Of course she could have her own room, he exclaimed. He would be glad to be relieved of her eternal neatness. Only she mustn’t move, he would. He’d take the room across the hall, which though less grand than this was every bit as comfortable. She thanked him joyfully.
That removed her last vexation. As the summer poured its hot richness upon Ardeith Eleanor passed her days in pleasant indolence. Young Dr. Bob Purcell, brother of Violet and son of the old doctor who had assisted Kester and Kester’s father into the world, dropped in once or twice a week, but his visits were more social than professional. He and Kester sat drinking juleps and talking about the cotton crop, varieties of good whiskey and the doings of the neighborhood. Eleanor liked Dr. Purcell, who was both wise and humorous, and enjoyed his visits.
The three old Durham girls called to see her, with great interest in her preparations for the baby. Eleanor was not used to gentle old ladies with nothing to do, but she tried to be pleasant. One of them brought her an elaborately briar-stitched sacque and another a pair of crocheted bootees, while the third sister, Miss Agatha, explained bashfully that she had adhesions and couldn’t stoop, but she brought an illustrated volume of fairy tales. Eleanor began to be aware that any one of the three sisters would have bartered her soul for a baby, and she was filled with sympathy and kissed them all. They told her they were happy that dear Kester had married such a sweet girl. It was the first time anybody had ever called her sweet.
Only once was she roused to look at herself, when Fred came to Ardeith at a time when his business brought him upriver for a few days. Beholding Eleanor, in a white satin dressing-gown, reclining on a sofa in her little boudoir, Fred was alarmed, embraced her tenderly, and asked why she had not let him know all was not well with her. When Eleanor exclaimed that she was perfectly well, and wanted to know what nonsense Kester had been telling him, Fred looked her up and down in astonishment. Then what, he demanded, did she mean by this ridiculous performance?
Suddenly, looking at his face, Eleanor saw herself as he saw her and she burst into uncontrollable laughter. Fred continued to stare.
“Darling,” she said at length, “you don’t understand. I’m a flower of the Old South about to produce an heir.”
“Do you really feel all right?” Fred repeated.
She nodded vehemently. “Yes, dad, I’m perfectly all right.”
“When you weren’t with Kester in the car at the train,” said Fred, still unconvinced, “I began to be worried.”
“At the train?” Eleanor gave him a look of mock horror. “My dear Mr. Upjohn, you don’t think a lady in my condition would show her figure past her own front gate?”
“You mean they won’t let you go out? But what do you do for exercise?”
“I cut flowers in the garden,” she told him wickedly, “with one of the maids following me around to make sure a grasshopper doesn’t frighten me.”
Fred sat down on one of the dainty little chairs. “I declare to my soul,” he said blankly. Then he added, “Before you were born your mother was cooking three meals a day for six men.”
“My mother,” said Eleanor, “was not married to Kester.” She began to laugh again. “Dad, get that look off your face. I’m smothered in magnolias, and I love it.”
Fred sat forward in the little chair, awkwardly, as though afraid it was going to crack under his weight. “This don’t seem a bit like you,” he said slowly.
Eleanor bit her finger, laughing at him.
“And you the smartest girl I ever did see,” Fred added.
How sad it is, she thought, that we should be so inarticulate that we have to laugh at our profoundest joys. She could not explain to Fred the happiness that was hers when her eyes met Kester’s across the room and they exchanged a fleeting smile. She and Kester teased each other, laughed at each other’s eccentricities, pretended to scold each other’s faults, with an unspoken understanding; she could not tell Fred about the moments when she had lain in Kester’s arms sobbing with the ecstasy of loving him. But Fred should have comprehended it. That he appeared not to comprehend puzzled and hurt her. I’m the first person who ever proved him wrong, she thought, and he can’t be sporting about it. She was relieved when he left, and it made her feel guilty.
3
The baby was born in October. Kester, of course, behaved as anybody might have foretold he would behave: he paced the hall, refused to eat, got sick from the fumes of chloroform, kept coming in at inconvenient moments to make sure Eleanor was not dying, and in general made a nuisance of himself; and about six o’clock in the afternoon when the nurse came to inform him that the baby was a girl he groaned “Thank God she’ll never have to go through this,” rushed into the bedroom and had to be forcibly restrained by the doctor from smothering Eleanor with his kisses. And when Eleanor murmured, “Please go away and let me rest,” he was persuaded that she did not love him any more and without having laid eyes on his daughter he went downstairs in anguish to call up his cousin and chum Neal Sheramy, and the two of them went out and got drunk and at sunrise had to be assisted to bed by Cameo.
But he was delighted with his fatherhood, sent telegrams to everybody he could think of and for a week kept open house, serving wine and eggnog in the parlor to a stream of congratulating visitors as though it had been New Year’s. Denis and Lysiane came up to see the baby—“Well, well, now where did you get this?”—and Fred, who could not get away until the following Sunday, came up at Kester’s urgent invitation, bringing Molly and Eleanor’s sister Florence, and they spent a merry day admiring the squirming pink object that was still called “the baby,” for though Kester and Eleanor had discussed dozens of possible names none of them seemed quite right. Eleanor lay in the great fourposter under its crimson canopy, vastly enjoying her homage. She was glad to see her parents; they were so frank, so strong, laughing at the elegance of her surroundings and reminding her that she
had been born in a tent. Here in the legended quiet of Ardeith they seemed to Eleanor refreshing, like a wind in summer, and she thought how proud she was that she could pass on to her child such an unconquerable heritage as hers. They took the night train back to town. Though she was tired, she told the nurse she wanted to speak to Kester before she went to sleep.
The nurse brought him and left them alone together. As Kester sat down by the bed Eleanor told him she knew what she wanted to name the baby. “I’d like to name her for a very courageous woman,” she said. “My father’s mother. Unless you mind.”
Kester was sitting on the bedstep. He laid his head on the pillow by hers. “My dearest girl, why did you think I’d mind?”
“Dad was illegitimate—had you forgotten that?—and you’re so conservative about some things.”
“Why no, darling, I hadn’t forgotten it. Something about a carpetbagger during Reconstruction.”
“I’ve never thought much about it until now,” said Eleanor. “She was a poor creature who’d never had a pretty dress nor very many square meals until she took the only chance she’d ever had to get them. He deserted her before dad was born. When dad was a child she used to take in washing, and somehow she brought him up and made him go to school. She couldn’t read, she didn’t know any of the sort of things we know, but I think she must have been splendid. She died when I was a little girl, as triumphantly as any soldier who had won a battle, for she knew dad was a great man and she had made him one. She had the courage that makes the mothers of heroes. I’d like to name my daughter for her.”
Kester smiled. “I suspect you’re very like her. What was her name?”
“Corrie May Upjohn.”
He took a long breath. “Eleanor, forgive me, but I think that’s atrocious.”
“So do I, but can’t we arrange it somehow?”
“Isn’t Corrie sometimes short for Cornelia?” he suggested after a moment’s consideration.
“Cornelia. I like that. Let’s name her Cornelia.”
“All right.”
Eleanor moved to rest her cheek against his hand as it lay on the pillow. They went on talking about the baby. Kester began to outline her future. He wanted Cornelia to have a hobby-horse with a real hair mane and tail. Eleanor began to picture her as she would come down the spiral staircase in bridal white.
“And maybe take her wedding trip in a flying-machine,” Kester suggested.
Eleanor shivered. “And scare me to death. Do you suppose they’ll be practical by then?”
“Why not? Automobiles weren’t practical twenty years ago. Why, Eleanor, she may live to see anything—even rockets going to the moon.”
Eleanor could not help laughing at his romantic imagination.
“Well, she might,” he persisted. “The world’s getting to be an amazing place. Did you read the list of inventions they made speeches about at the German Kaiser’s silver jubilee?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It was a gorgeous celebration—a sort of handshaking-and-eternal-friendship party for all the kings and queens and writers and scientists in Europe. The Kaiser combined the anniversary celebration with the marriage of his daughter, and the bridesmaids were English, Rumanian, Russian and Italian princesses—to symbolize the unity of Europe, you know—and the visiting kings made speeches and called the Kaiser Europe’s man of peace. You needn’t laugh at what I said about rockets, either. The Kaiser conferred the title ‘Greatest German of the Twentieth Century’ on Count von Zeppelin.”
“Who’s he?”
“He invented the dirigible balloon. And they can go anywhere.”
“Not to the moon, stupid. When was all this?”
“Last summer. Stop being so practical. Don’t you like the idea of your daughter’s growing up in a world that’s turning into a sort of wonderland?”
“I don’t know. It’s rather frightening. But I do think I’d like to go up in a balloon.”
“So would I,” Kester agreed. In the ancient cradle near the bedside Cornelia began to kick. Eleanor kissed Kester’s hand as it lay against her face. She was very tired, and drowsy, and very happy indeed.
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About the Author
Gwen Bristow (1903–1980), the author of seven bestselling historical novels that bring to life momentous events in American history, such as the siege of Charleston during the American Revolution (Celia Garth) and the great California gold rush (Calico Palace), was born in South Carolina, where the Bristow family had settled in the seventeenth century. After graduating from Judson College in Alabama and attending the Columbia School of Journalism, Bristow worked as a reporter for New Orleans’ Times-Picayune from 1925 to 1934. Through her husband, screenwriter Bruce Manning, she developed an interest in longer forms of writing—novels and screenplays.
After Bristow moved to Hollywood, her literary career took off with the publication of Deep Summer, the first novel in a trilogy of Louisiana-set historical novels, which also includes The Handsome Road and This Side of Glory. Bristow continued to write about the American South and explored the settling of the American West in her bestselling novels Jubilee Trail, which was made into a film in 1954, and in her only work of nonfiction, Golden Dreams. Her novel Tomorrow Is Forever also became a film, starring Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, and Natalie Wood, in 1946.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1938 by Gwen Bristow
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN 978-1-4804-8528-0
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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