CHAPTER XXI
The heat and the wind--and remorse--gave Eleanor such a prolongedheadache that Maurice, in real anxiety and without consulting her--wroteto Mrs. Houghton that "Nelly was awfully used up by the hot weather,"and might he bring her to Green Hill now, instead of later? Her promptand friendly telegram, "_Come at once_," made him tell his wife that hewas going to pack her off to the mountains, _quick_!
She began to say no, she couldn't manage it; "I--I can't leave Bingo"(she was hunting for an excuse not to leave Maurice), "Bingo is somiserable if I am out of his sight."
"You can take him,--old Rover's gone to heaven. Think you can startto-morrow?" He sat down beside her and took her hand in his warm youngpaw; the pity of her made him frown--pity, and an intolerable annoyanceat himself! She, a woman twice his age, had married him, when, ofcourse, she ought to have told him not to be a little fool; "...wiped mynose and sent me home!" he thought, with cynical humor. But, all thesame, she loved him. And he had played her a damned cheap trick!--whichwas hidden safely away in the two-family house on Ash Street. "Hidden."What a detestable word! It flashed into Maurice's mind that if, thatnight among the stars, he had made a clean breast of it all to Eleanor,he wouldn't now be going through this business of hiding things--andcovering them up by innumerable, squalid little falsenesses. "Therewould have been a bust-up, and she might have left me. But that wouldhave been the end of it!" he thought; he would have been _free_ fromwhat he had once compared to a dead hen tied around a dog's neck--theclinging corruption of a lie! The Truth would have made him free. Aloud,he said, "Star,"--she caught her breath at the old lovely word--"I'll goto Green Hill with you, and take care of you for a few days. I'm sure Ican fix it up at the office."
The tears leaped to her eyes. "Oh, Maurice!" she said; "I haven't beennice to you. I'm afraid I'm--rather temperamental. I--I get to fancyingthings. One day last week I--had horrid thoughts about you."
"About _me_?" he said, laughing; "well, no doubt I deserved 'em!"
"No!" she said, passionately; "no--you didn't! I know you didn't. ButI--" With the melody of that old name in her ears, her thoughts weretoo shameful to be confessed. She wouldn't tell him how she had wrongedhim in her mind; she would just say: "Don't keep things from me,darling! Be frank with me, Maurice. And--" she stopped and tried tolaugh, but her mournful eyes dredged his to find an indorsement of herown certainties--"and tell me you don't love anybody else?"
She held her breath for his answer:
"You _bet_ I don't!"
The humor of such a question almost made him laugh. In his own mind hewas saying, "Lily, and _Love_? Good Lord!"
Eleanor, putting her hand on his, said, in a whisper, "But we have nochildren. Do you mind--very much?"
"Great Scott! no. Don't worry about _that_. That's the last thing Ithink of! Now, when do you think you can start?" He spoke with weariedbut determined gentleness.
She did not detect the weariness,--the gentleness made her so happy; hecalled her "Star"! He said he didn't love anyone else! He said he didn'tmind because they had no children.... Oh, how dreadful for her to havehad those shameful fears--and out in "their meadow," too! It wassacrilege.... Aloud, she said she could be ready by the first of theweek; "And you'll stay with me? Can't you take two weeks?" sheentreated.
"Oh, I can't afford _that_" he said; "but I guess I can manage one...."
Later that day, when she told Mrs. Newbolt--who had come home for afortnight--what Maurice had planned for her, Eleanor's happiness ebbed alittle in the realization that he would be in town all by himself, "fora whole week! He'll go off with the Mortons, I suppose," she said,uneasily.
"Well," said Mrs. Newbolt, with what was, for her, astonishing brevity,"why shouldn't he? Don't forget what my dear father said about cats:_'Open the door!'_ Tell Maurice you _want_ him to go off with theMortons!"
Of course Eleanor told him nothing of the sort. But she was obliged, atGreen Hill, to watch him "going off" with Edith. "I should think," shesaid once, "that Mrs. Houghton wouldn't want her to be wandering aboutwith you, alone."
"Perhaps Mrs. Houghton doesn't consider me a desperate character," hesaid, dryly; "and, besides, Johnny Bennett chaperones us!"
Sometimes not even John's presence satisfied Eleanor, and she chaperonedher husband herself. She did it very openly one day toward the end ofMaurice's little vacation. Henry Houghton had said, "Look here; youboys" (of course Johnny was hanging around) "must earn your salt! We'vegot to get the second mowing in before night. I'll present you both witha pitchfork."
To which Maurice replied, "Bully!"
"Me, too!" said Edith.
And John said, "I'll be glad to be of any assistance, sir."
("How their answers sum those youngsters up!" Mr. Houghton told hisMary.)
Eleanor, dogging Maurice to a deserted spot on the porch, said,uneasily, "Don't do it, darling; it's too hot for you."
But he only laughed, and started off with the other two to work allmorning in the splendid heat and dazzle of the field. "Skeezics, don'tbe so strenuous!" he commanded, once; and Johnny was really nervous:
"It's too hot for you, Buster."
"Too hot for your grandmother!" Edith said--bare-armed, open-throated,her creamy neck reddening with sunburn.
Toward noon, Maurice's chaperon, toiling out across the hot stubble towatch him, called from under an umbrella, "Edith! You'll get freckled."
"When I begin to worry about my complexion, I'll let you know," Edithretorted; "Maurice, your biceps are simply great!"
"_How_ she flatters him!" Eleanor thought; "And she knows he is lookingat her." He was! Edith, lifting a forkful of hay, throwing the weight onher right thigh and straining backward with upraised arms, her big hattumbling over one ear, and the sweat making her hair curl all around herforehead, was something any man would like to look at! No man would wantto look at Eleanor--a tired, dull, jealous woman, whose eyes wereblinking from the glare and whose face sagged with elderly fatigue. Sheturned silently and went away. "He likes to be with her--but he doesn'tsay so. Oh, if he would only be frank!" Her eyes blurred, but she wouldnot let the tears come, so they fell backward into her heart--whichbrimmed with them, to overflow, after a while, in bitter words.
Edith, watching the retreating figure, never guessing those unshedtears, said, despairingly, to herself, "I suppose I ought to go homewith her?" She dropped her pitchfork; "I'll come back after dinner,boys," she said; "I must look after Eleanor now."
"Quitter!" Maurice jeered; but Johnny said, "I'm glad she's gone; it'stoo much for a girl." His eyes followed her as she went running over thefield to catch up with Eleanor, who, on the way back to the house, onlypoke once; she told Edith that flattery was bad taste the cupoverflowed! "Men hate flattery," she said.
"Hate it?" said Edith, "they lap it up!"
When the two young men sat down under an oak for their noon hour, with abucket of buttermilk standing precariously in the grass beside them,John said again, anxiously, "It was too hot for her; I hope she won'thave a headache."
"She always has headaches," Maurice said, carelessly.
"What!" said Bennett, alarmed; "she's never said a word to me aboutheadaches."
"Oh, you mean Edith? I thought you meant Eleanor. Edith never had aheadache in her life! Some girl, Johnny?"
"Has that just struck you?" said John.
Maurice fished some grass seeds out of the buttermilk, took a deepdraught of it, and looked at his companion, lying full length on thestubble in the shadow of the oak. It came to him with a curious shockthat Bennett was in love. No "calf love" this time! Just a youngman's love for a young woman--sound and natural, and beautiful, andright.... "I wonder," Maurice thought, "does she know it?"
It seemed as if Johnny, puffing at his pipe, and slapping a mosquito onhis lean brown hand, answered his thought:
"Edith's astonishingly young. She doesn't realize that she's grown up."There was a pause; "_Or that I have._"
Maurice was silent; he sudden
ly felt old. These two--thesechildren!--believing in love, and in each other, were in a world oftheir own; a world which knew no hidden household in the purlieus ofMercer; no handsome, menacing, six-year-old child; no faded, jealouswoman, overflowing with wearisome caresses! In this springtime world wasEdith--vigorous, and sweet, and supremely reasonable;--and _never_temperamental! And this young man, loving her.... Maurice turned over onhis face in the grass; but he did not kiss the earth's "perfumedgarment"; he bit his own clenched fist.
He was very silent for the rest of their day in the field for onething, they had to work at a high pitch, for then were blue-black cloudsin the west! At a little after three Edith came out again, but not tohelp.
"I had to put on my glad rags," she said, sadly, "because some peopleare coming to tea. I hate 'em--I mean the rags."
Maurice stopped long enough to turn and look at her, and say, "They'remighty pretty!" And so, indeed, they were--a blue organdie, with whiteribbons around the waist, and a big white hat with a pink rose in a knotof black velvet on the brim. "How's Eleanor?" he said, beginning toskewer a bale of hay on to his pitchfork.
"She's afraid there's going to be a thunderstorm," Edith said; "that'swhy I came out here. She wants you, Maurice."
"All right," he said, briefly; and struck his fork down in the earth."I've got to go, Johnny."
To do one's duty without love is doubtless better than to fail in doingone's duty, but it has its risks. Maurice's heartless "kindness" to hiswife was like a desert creeping across fertile earth; the eagergenerosity of boyhood had long ago hardened into the gray aridity ofmere endurance.
Edith turned and walked back with him; they were both silent untilMaurice said, "You've got Johnny's scalp all right, Skeezics."
"Don't be silly!" she said; her annoyance made her look so mature thathe was apologetic; was she in love with the cub? He was suddenlydismayed, though he could not have said why. "I don't like jokes likethat," Edith said.
"I beg your pardon, Edith. I somehow forget you're grown up," he said,and sighed.
She laughed. "Eleanor and you have my age on your minds! Eleanorinformed me that I was too old to be rampaging round making hay with youtwo boys! And she thinks I 'flatter' you," Edith said, grinning. "Itrust I'm not injuring your immortal soul, Maurice, and making you vainof your muscle?"
Instantly he was angry. Eleanor, daring to interfere between himself andEdith? He was silent for the rest of the walk home; and he was stillsilent when he went up to his wife's room and found her lying on herbed, old Bingo snoozing beside her--windows closed, shades down. "Oh,Maurice!" she said, with a gasp of relief; "I was so afraid you wouldget caught in a thunderstorm!"
"_Don't_ be so absurd!" he said.
"I--I love you; that's why I am 'absurd,'" she said, piteously. It wasas if she held to his lips the cup of her heart, brimming with thoseunshed tears,--but is there any man who would not turn away from a cupthat holds so bitter a draught?
Maurice turned away. "This room is insufferably hot!" he said. He let awindow curtain roll up with a jerk, and flung open a window.
She was silent.
"I wish," he said, "that you'd let up on Edith. You're alwayscriticizing her. I don't like it."
* * * * *
That night Johnny Bennett, somehow, lured Edith out on to the porch tosay good night. The thunderstorm had come and gone, and the drenchedgarden was heavy with wet fragrance.
"Let's sit down," Johnny said; then, beseechingly, "Edith, don't youfeel a little differently about me, now?"
"Oh, Johnny, _dear_!"
"Just a little, Edith? You don't know what it would mean to me, just tohope?"
"Johnny, I am awfully fond of you, but--"
"Well, never mind," he said, patiently, "I'll wait."
He went down the steps, hesitated, and, while Edith was still squeezinga little wet ball of a handkerchief against her eyes, came back.
"Do you mind if I ask you just one question, Edith?"
"Of course not! Only, Johnny, it just about _kills_ me to be--horrid toyou."
"Have you really got to be horrid?" said John Bennett.
"Johnny, I _can't_ help it!"
"Is it because there's any other fellow, Edith? That's the question Iwanted to ask you."
She was silent.
"Edith, I really think I have a right to know?"
Still she didn't speak.
"Of course, if there _is_--"
"There isn't!" she broke in.... "Why, Johnny, you're the best friend Ihave. No; there isn't anybody else. The honest truth is, I don't believeI'm the sort of girl that gets married. I can't imagine caring for_anybody_ as much as I care for father and mother and Maurice. I--I'mnot sentimental, Johnny, a bit. I'm awfully fond of you; _awfully_! Youcome next to Maurice. But--but not that way. That's the truth, Johnny.I'm perfectly straight with you; you know that? And you won't throw meover, will you? If I lost you, I declare I--I don't know what I'd do!You won't give me up, will you?"
John Bennett was silent for a long minute; then he said, "No, Edith;I'll never give you up, dear." And he went away into the darkness.
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