This Side of Glory

by Gwen Bristow

  “Why Cousin Sylvia, how good of you to drop in! And in this doleful weather, too.”

  “I’ve been so wanting to see you, Eleanor dear.” Sylvia clasped Eleanor’s hand ardently.

  Wondering why anybody of Sylvia’s age and disposition should think an over-use of rouge would cover the querulous lines in her cheeks, Eleanor exclaimed, “Your hands are cold. I’m sure you’d like a hot cup of coffee, wouldn’t you?”

  “How nice of you,” said Sylvia.

  Eleanor continued to be nice. She took Sylvia’s coat, talking pleasantly while she made uncomplimentary mental remarks upon her visitor’s girlish frock and floriated hat—Eleanor would have considered them both too juvenile for herself, though she was about twenty years younger than Sylvia—and settled Sylvia comfortably in an armchair by the hearth. Cameo brought coffee. “Now we can have a good long chat,” Eleanor said as she filled the cups.

  Sylvia smiled gently. “Yes, a good long chat. Bad weather makes a fireside so comforting, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, doesn’t it?” Eleanor agreed.

  “Your poinsettias are especially pretty this year. I noticed them as I drove up.”

  “Thank you so much,” said Eleanor.

  For a few minutes they sipped coffee and discussed poinsettias. After awhile Sylvia remarked that everyone’s garden would be full of weeds after this wet spell. “But you don’t work your own flowers, do you?” She asked.

  “No, I have a man for that.”

  “Gardening is such healthful exercise,” Sylvia reminded her. “You should really take it up. The air and the beautiful sunshine, they make one’s troubles seem small,” she said invitingly, but as she got no response she edged her chair an inch nearer to ask, “How have you been amusing yourself lately?”

  “Why, I’ve had a great deal to do, getting the children’s winter clothes in order and making my Christmas list, and I’ve taken advantage of the dull weather to catch up on my correspondence.”

  “You write a great many letters?” Sylvia inquired.

  “I have five brothers and sisters, you know,” Eleanor returned blandly, “and there are my parents, besides all my old friends.” And if you’re trying to find out whether or not I’ve been writing to Kester, she added in her mind, you’re going to be disappointed.

  But Sylvia was not so easily disappointed. “You don’t find it lonesome out here on the plantation?” she asked innocently.

  “Lonesome? Why no. With two small children and a household as large as this, one doesn’t get much chance for solitude.”

  “But that’s hardly companionship,” suggested Sylvia.

  “Why Cousin Sylvia, I get the most delightful companionship in the world from my children.”

  As that remark was blameless Sylvia rested a moment, while Eleanor, watching her across the coffee-pot, wondered how long it was going to take her to come to the direct questions Sylvia was evidently yearning to have answered. “My dear,” murmured Sylvia, “I have been thinking of you a great deal recently.”

  “How kind of you,” said Eleanor.

  Sylvia drank the last coffee in her cup. “Yes, my dear, I have. You aren’t looking well. Are you feeling quite yourself, Eleanor?”

  “I’m perfectly well, thank you.”

  “There are aches of the heart,” Sylvia said darkly.

  “Let me give you some coffee,” said Eleanor. She refilled Sylvia’s cup and her own.

  Sylvia looked around the room and then at Eleanor again. “I have wanted to come to see you before, dear child,” she continued. “But I have put it off. Sometimes one’s duty is not clear. It is difficult to bring up unpleasant problems, even from the loftiest of motives. And yet, I am convinced I should speak to you. For your own good, Eleanor.”

  Eleanor silently observed that Sylvia would have loved to be a dentist and say gloatingly, “Now this may hurt a little.”

  Sylvia was talking on in her gentle whiny monotone. She toyed with her subject, drew it around and around. Eleanor listened, pretending a sweet impassivity while inwardly she burned with resentment.

  “We were so happy when you and Kester were married,” Sylvia informed her at length. “And yet—I am sure you never suspected this and I would be the last to tell you except that the time has come when it seems right to speak frankly—there was some surprise.”

  “Was there?”

  “Indeed yes, my dear. Of course you are startled. You are a lovely, well-educated girl, and your people are most deserving, your father merits a great deal of credit for his honorable career, with so few opportunities as he has had, we are proud to know our country gives a chance to men like that, that’s what America is for, isn’t it?”

  “Do you think so?” Eleanor asked fatuously.

  “Yes, it is good to know we have no classes in this happy land. But there was astonishment, I shan’t deny, when Kester stepped outside his own circle—not that I mean to imply he hadn’t a perfect right to do so, but you and he had not been brought up alike, you must admit.”

  “I’ve never thought of not admitting it,” said Eleanor.

  “Certainly, my dear, everyone thought it so courageous of you to have no false pride. And I think I should tell you, lest you misunderstand my making this plain, that I championed you from the very beginning.”

  “Did you?”

  “I certainly did, Eleanor. When Miss Agatha Durham said to me—such fine girls the Durhams are, devoted to good works, but a bit conservative—when Miss Agatha said to me, ‘But what is this girl’s background?’—I said right out to her, ‘Now Miss Agatha, I am sure Kester Larne would not have married anyone whose antecedents were not unquestionable, and just because we don’t know so much about the Upjohns as we do about some other families does not indicate that they aren’t very worthy people, and anyway,’ I said, ‘this is a Christian country,’ and I was happy to observe that the Durham girls called the next day, the very next day.”

  “How obliging of you,” said Eleanor.

  “My dear, with all my faults nobody can say I have not always tried to do my duty. And I’m sure your forebears were quite flawless, were they not, Eleanor?”

  Eleanor smiled upon her with all politeness. “In my home, Cousin Sylvia, we gave very little attention to the dead except to see that they were properly buried.”

  “Ah,” murmured Sylvia. But though baffled, she was not silenced. She pursued her subject. “I have told you all this, Eleanor dear, not to hurt you—I should be very sad if I thought I had hurt you—but to make you understand that there has been certain, ah, unkind gossip of late.” She waited for Eleanor’s reaction, but as Eleanor showed none Sylvia went on. “Oh my dear, if you knew how it pains me to tell you!—for there have been those malicious enough to say that a man cannot be condemned for returning to his own people. How can anyone be so cruel? How can anyone have such foolish, hurtful interest in the concerns of others, talking, tattling, injuring—” She paused dramatically.

  “I don’t understand it myself,” Eleanor responded. “Maybe you can explain it.”

  “Oh, I cannot! I shall never understand it. My dear, if you could know how my heart has bled for you! But of course you don’t know what I’m talking about?”

  “How should I?”

  “Indeed, how should you? How could you? I have dreaded this, I have prayed over it, till I have finally concluded it is my duty to tell you, it was somebody’s duty to do so and it was evident nobody else was going to. Oh, how I have shrunk from undertaking such a task! I’m related to Kester, his dear mother is my cousin, you know, and while I hesitate to speak evil of my own flesh and blood I must say Kester was always a wild boy, broke our hearts almost, and we did think, oh, we hoped, marriage might be the making of him—”

  With a blank smile on her face, Eleanor was thinking, I won’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me writ
he, not if it kills me. She listened stolidly.

  “But don’t you understand what I mean?” Sylvia was pleading.

  Eleanor continued to smile, and shook her head. “I’m quite in the dark, Cousin Sylvia. Won’t you have another cup of coffee?”

  Sylvia declined. She talked ahead in her expressionless voice, probing, hinting, watching. Eleanor remained obtuse. “The wife is always the last to hear these things,” Sylvia lamented after awhile. “And that is shameful. People mean to be kind about not speaking, but somebody ought to speak, and someone in the family is better than an outsider, don’t you agree with me, someone related to Kester?”

  “I thought nearly everybody in town was related to Kester.”

  “Yes, the family had many branches. But someone who has been intimate with the household all her life is certainly better than a more remote relative, don’t you think, when something has to be spoken of?”

  “But what has to be spoken of?” Eleanor civilly inquired.

  “My poor, innocent girl, can it be possible that you still don’t understand?”

  “Understand what, Cousin Sylvia?”

  “Why my dear, you cannot believe everyone doesn’t know Kester is working at the government cotton station, has been there for two months?”

  “Why of course, I thought everybody knew that. Why shouldn’t they?”

  “But Eleanor, have you heard no whisper of anything further?”

  “No whisper? What sort of whisper?”

  “Oh you poor woman, about Isabel Valcour.” Now that she had said it Sylvia’s glance sneaked over Eleanor’s face. Eleanor smiled and waited until Sylvia resumed her babbling. “Poor Isabel. Such a charming girl, and from such a lovely family, it’s all so sad. So very sad. Her brilliant marriage, and then her being left a widow like that, so young. Until now we thought she had no interest in anyone hereabouts, we thought her heart was in another hemisphere.” Sylvia said it with a slow shake of the head, as though the world contained dozens of hemispheres and she would not betray confidence by revealing in which one of them poor Isabel had left her heart. “But being alone, and then returning here for the duration of the war, it must have made the poor girl so unhappy, and she had no parents, no children. A woman should not be alone, she should have children and a home, and yet it does seem as if we good women who try to do our duty get least appreciation of all, doesn’t it?”

  “If you mean me, I’ve been quite well appreciated, Cousin Sylvia.” Eleanor spoke rigidly; by this time she was so angry at Sylvia’s meddling that she could have choked her with pleasure.

  “Oh my dear, can it be that your affection for Kester blinds you so? That you really cannot see what is happening? Kester, Isabel—”

  She paused expectantly. Eleanor had planned no answer, but she was suddenly possessed by a cool disdain. She looked straight at Sylvia and began to laugh. “Really, Cousin Sylvia!” she exclaimed.

  Cousin Sylvia stared incredulously.

  Eleanor continued to laugh at her. “Why Cousin Sylvia, have you come all the way over here in this fog to tell me Kester has been having an affair with Isabel Valcour? Did you, could you possibly, think I didn’t know it?”

  Cousin Sylvia gasped. She was amazed, and resentful that her own hope of triumph had been wasted. “So somebody has told you before?” she managed to ask.

  Eleanor poured herself a third cup of coffee and lifted her eyes to look at Sylvia’s ridiculous fluffy clothes, her rouged effort to look young, and she felt no pity. “I’m afraid you’re still living in the nineteenth century,” she said. “Kester and I understand each other perfectly.”

  “Glub,” said Cousin Sylvia.

  Eleanor gathered up her own weapons. “To be sure, a woman of your age couldn’t be expected to understand the younger generation. I suppose you cling to the quaint old notion that once people are married they should treat members of the other sex like lepers. Dear dear, how boresome such a life must have been! But people were expected to be stodgy in your day, weren’t they?”

  Sylvia managed to say, “Then you know about Isabel—and you don’t mind?”

  “Oh Cousin Sylvia, even at your age one must realize the modern world has changed. We’ve become so much more broadminded since you were young. The new freedom, you know. Kester and I wouldn’t dream of keeping each other in that old-fashioned bondage.”

  “Each other?” Sylvia echoed. She was leaning forward, her hands fidgeting on the arms of her chair.

  Eleanor reached over and patted Sylvia’s hand kindly. “Now don’t be troubled. I know you meant to be very helpful when you came over to tell me what you thought I didn’t know. It was just your goodness of heart that prompted you, and I appreciate it. But try to understand that modern people regard these things differently.”

  Cousin Sylvia blinked, while Eleanor regarded her with a little smile of pitying amusement. After a moment Cousin Sylvia stood up. She lifted herself to her full height, which was not very high.

  “To laugh at such things!” she exclaimed in horror. “Eleanor Larne, you have no moral sense whatever. I am ashamed to have tried to do you a kindness.”

  “I think you should be.” Eleanor stood up too, offering Sylvia her coat and handbag. “It makes you quite ridiculous, you know, busying yourself with things you don’t understand.”

  “I understand morality and decency!” Sylvia retorted. She snatched her coat and scrambled into it. “I do not understand people who have no power of righteous indignation. When you talk like that it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see you breaking your marriage vows too, not at all! Stop laughing at me!”

  Eleanor did not obey her. “Kester used to tell me you were funny,” she said. “You certainly are.” She opened the door. “Thank you for a very diverting morning.”

  Sylvia stepped grandly into the hall. “We might have known. When a man of fine breeding marries a woman who’s common as pig-tracks—we might have known.”

  “You might have known,” Eleanor said gently as she followed Sylvia out, “that if I had needed your advice I should have asked for it. Of course I understand your interest—it must be very dull to have nothing to do but stagnate among the tombs of your ancestors.” She opened the front door. “Thank you so much for calling, Cousin Sylvia.”

  “I’m not your cousin,” Sylvia snorted in farewell.

  Eleanor watched her marching across the gallery and down the front steps. She went back up to her own room, her lips curling with rage as she climbed the stairs.

  Then, regarding the matter of marital infidelity exactly as she would have regarded it had she lived in the administration of President Millard Fillmore, Eleanor dropped down on the bed and put her head on the pillow miserably and cried. She cried until she had to give her red eyes a long treatment with hot water and ice before she was willing to face the children at dinner.

  3

  Cornelia came in from school lamenting the cloudy weather, which had prevented her playing outdoors at recess and promised to keep her in all the afternoon, while Philip, who had not objected to staying indoors during the morning, immediately joined her. Eleanor cheered them by promising that as tomorrow was a Saturday and Cornelia would not have to go to school, if the weather cleared she would take them both to town to buy new clothes for a Christmas party to which they had been invited. This put them into better humor, and to keep them amused for the afternoon Eleanor got out a set of cardboard cutouts she had meant as a Christmas present and gave it to Cornelia and Philip to play with. The set consisted of heads, legs and bodies of animals printed on sheets of thin cardboard, ready to be cut out and put together. As they both liked to make things, when they were provided with blunt-pointed scissors and a pot of paste they settled down by the nursery fire, happily prepared to create disorder. They were so lovable as they sat on the floor chattering with each other, and their exuberance so remindful of Ke
ster’s, that Eleanor felt a thrust of pain as she talked to them.

  Leaving the children in Dilcy’s care she went to her own room and sat down in front of the fire. She wondered what Kester was doing, what he was thinking, if he was missing the children. Whatever he thought of her, she could not believe it possible that he would continue to neglect Cornelia and Philip. She had never seen a man who appeared to enjoy his children more than Kester did. But she did not, she told herself for the hundredth time, want him to come back to her merely for their sake; that would be a blow neither her love nor her pride could endure. She wanted Kester to come back because he loved her. He had loved her very deeply, and no matter how much she had hurt and angered him on their last evening together one did not with a single stroke tear down a structure that had been so many years in the building. If it were true about Isabel, she still was convinced that Kester loved her; she believed he had turned to Isabel as some men turned to gambling or alcohol in periods when they could not face themselves. But there were men, she remembered, who eventually found their means of evasion a necessary curtain between themselves and impossible reality.

  Or was this, she asked, merely her pride speaking in its own defense, unable to acknowledge that she had failed in the one thing she had tried hardest to do?

  She did not know. “Eleanor, stop it!” she begged herself. “Do something!”

  But she had no idea what should be done. Maybe fresh air and exercise would be a help. It was cloudy but not raining, with occasional flecks of sunshine breaking through the gloom. If she took a long walk it might clear her mind. She changed into a pair of flat-heeled shoes, put on a coat and started walking along the river road.

  After a few minutes she was glad she had come out. The wind was damp, and blew refreshingly through her hair, for she had come without a hat. The countryside had a look of peace. On either side of the road were the oaks, their draperies of moss blowing, and behind the oaks the fields were resting for their spring rebirth. In the trees the wind was like a serious and simple melody. Hands in her coat pockets, Eleanor walked fast, following the turns of the road and paying no attention to the occasional car or wagon that passed her. In times of turbulence the outdoors could always quiet her spirits.