CHAPTER XXIV
After a tornado comes quietness; again the sun shines, and birds sing,and many small things look up, unhurt. It was incredible to Maurice,eating his breakfast the next morning, reading his paper, opening hisletters, and glancing at a pale Eleanor, heavy-eyed and silent, that hisworld was still the same world that it had been before he had picked upthe sealed telegram on the hall table. He asked Eleanor how she felt;told her to take care of herself; said he'd not be at home to dinner,and went off to his office.... He was safe! Those two minutes in thedining room of Lily's flat, while the white-jacketed orderly was tryingto persuade the protesting Jacky to let him carry him downstairs, hadremoved any immediate alarm; Lily had promised not to communicate withJacky's father.
So Maurice, walking to the office, told himself that everything was allright--but "a close call!" Then he thought of Jacky, who, at hiscommand, had so instantly "behaved himself"; and of that grip on hisear; and again that pang of something he did not recognize made himswallow hard. "Poor little beggar!" he thought: "I wonder how he is? Iwonder if he'll pull through?" He hoped he would. "Tough on Lily, ifanything happens." But his anxiety--though he did not know it--was notentirely on Lily's account. For the first time in the child's life,Maurice was aware of Jacky as a possession. The tornado of the nightbefore--the anger and fear and pity--had plowed down below the surfaceof his mind, and touched that subsoil of conscious responsibility forcreation, the realization that, whether through love or throughselfishness, the man who brings a child into this terrible, squalid,glorious world, is a creator, even as God is the Creator. So Maurice,sitting at his desk that next day, answering a client on the telephone,or making an appointment to go and "look at a house," was really feelingin his heart--not love, of course, but a consciousness of his ownrelation to that little flushed, suffering body out in the contagiousward of the hospital in Medfield. "Will he pull through?" Maurice askedhimself. It was six years ago that, standing at the door of ayellow-brick apartment house, with two fingers looped through thestrings of a box of roses, Jacky's father had said, "Perhaps it will beborn dead!" How dry his lips had been that day with the hope of death!Now, suddenly, his lips were dry with fear that the kid wouldn't pullthrough--which would be "tough on Lily." His face was stern with thisnew emotion of anxiety which was gradually becoming pain; he even forgothow scared he had been at the thought that Eleanor _might_ have openedthat telegram. "I swear, I wish I hadn't hurt his feelings about thatcigar stub!" he said. Then he remembered Eleanor: "I could wring Lily'sneck!" But Eleanor hadn't opened the telegram; and Maurice hoped Jackywould get well--because "it would be tough on Lily" if he didn't. Thushe dismissed his wife. So long as Lily's recklessness had not done anyharm, it was easy to dismiss her--so very far had she receded into thedull, patiently-to-be-endured, background of life!
The Eleanor of the next few weeks, who seemed just a little moremelancholy and silent than usual, a little more devoted to old Bingo,did not attract his attention in any way. But when Edith came in on thefollowing Sunday, he had his wife sufficiently on his mind to say, in aquick aside:
"Edith, don't give me away on being sort of upset last Sunday night,will you?" (As he spoke, he remembered that swift kiss. "Nice littleSkeezics!" he thought.) But he finished his sentence with perfectmatter-of-factness: "it was just a--a little personal worry. I don'twant Eleanor bothered, you understand?"
"Of course," said Edith, gravely
And so it was that in another month or two, with reliance upon Edith'sdiscretion, and satisfaction in a recovering Jacky, the track of thetornado in Maurice's mind was quite covered up with the old, ugly,commonplace of furtive security. In the security Maurice was conscious,in a kindly way, that poor old Eleanor looked pretty seedy; so hebrought her some flowers once in a while; not as often as he would haveliked to, for, though he had more money now, eight weeks of a privateroom in a hospital "kind o' makes a dent in your income," Maurice toldhimself; "but I don't begrudge it," he thought; "I'm glad the kid gotwell."
So, after that night of terror and turmoil,--when Eleanor hadfainted--Maurice's life in his own house settled again into the oldtranquil forlornness, enlivened only by those Sunday-afternoon visitsfrom Edith.
And Eleanor?... There had been some dumb days, when she moved about thehouse or sat opposite Maurice at table, or exercised Bingo, like anautomaton. Sometimes she sat at her window, looking down through thebare branches of the poplar at the still, wintry garden; the paintedtable, heaped with grimy snow slowly melting in the chill Marchsunshine; the dead stalks of the lilies on each side of the icy bricksof the path; the rusty bars of the iron gate, through which, now andthen, came the glimmer, a block away, of the river--"their river"!Sometimes for an hour her mind numbly considered these things; thenwould come a fierce throb of pain: "He was all the time saying he'couldn't afford' things; that was so he could give her money, Isuppose?" Then blank listlessness again. She did not suffer very much.She was too stunned to suffer. She merely said to herself, vaguely,"I'll leave him." It may have been on the third day that, when she said,"I will leave him; he has been false to me," her mind whispered back,very faintly, like an echo, "He has been false to himself." For just amoment she loved him enough to think that he had sinned. _Maurice hassinned!_ When she said that, the dismay of it made her forget herself.She said it with horror, and after a while she added a question: "_Why_did he do it?" Then came beating its way up through anger and woundedpride, and suffering love, still another question: "Was it my fault thathe did it? Did he fall in love with that frightful woman because Ifailed him?" Instantly her mind sheered off from this question: "I dideverything I knew how to make him happy! I would have died to make himhappy. I adored him! How could he care for that common, ignorant woman Isaw on the porch? A woman who wasn't a lady. A--a _bad_ woman!" But yetthe question repeated itself: "Why? Why?" It demanded an answer: Why didMaurice--high-minded, pure-hearted, overflowing with a love asbeautiful, and as perfect as Youth itself--how _could_ Maurice be drawnto such a woman? And by and by the answer struggled to her lips, tearingher heart as it came with dreadful pain: "He did it because I didn'tmake him happy."
Just as Maurice, recognizing the responsibility of creation, had, at thetouch of his son's little hand, felt the tremor of a moral conception,so now Eleanor, barren so long! felt the pangs of a birth of spiritualresponsibility: "I didn't make him happy, so--Oh, my poor Maurice, itwas my fault!"... But of course this divine self-forgetfulness inself-reproach, was as feeble as any new-born thing. When it stirred, anduttered little elemental sounds--"my fault, my fault"--she forgot thewrong he had done her, in seeing the wrong he had done himself.... "Oh,my Maurice--my Maurice!" But most of the time she did not hear thisfrail cry of the sense of sin! She thought entirely and angrily ofherself; she said, over and over, that she was going to leave him. Shewas absorbed in hideous and poignant imaginings, based on that organiccuriosity which is experienced only by the woman who meditates upon "theother woman." When these visions overwhelmed her, she said she wouldn'tleave him--she would hold him! She wouldn't give him up to thatfrightful creature, whom he--kissed.... "Oh, my God! He _kisses_ her!"No; she wouldn't give him up; she would just accuse him; just tell himshe knew he had been false; tell him there was no use lying about it!Then, perhaps, say she would forgive him?... Yes; if he would promise tothrow the vile woman over, she would forgive him. She did not, ofcourse, reflect that forgiveness is not a thing that can be promised; itcannot be manufactured. It comes in exact proportion as we love thesinner more and self less.
And forgiveness is not forgetfulness! It is more love.
Eleanor did not know this. So, except for those occasional cooling anddivine moments of blaming herself, she scorched and shriveled in theflames of self-love. And as usual, she was speechless. There were manyof these silent hours (which were such a matter of course to Mauricethat he never noticed them!) before she gathered herself together, anddecided that she would not leave him. She would fight! How? "Oh, I_can't_ think!" she moaned. So
those first days passed--days of impotentdeterminations, which whirled and alternated, and contradicted eachother.
Once Maurice, glancing at her over his newspaper at breakfast,thought to himself, "She hasn't said a word since she got up! PoorEleanor!..." Then he remembered how he had once supposed these silencesof hers were full of things too lovely and profound for words! Hefrowned, and read the sporting page, and forgot her silences, and her,too. But he did not forget Jacky. "I'll buy the kid a ball," he wasthinking....
So the days passed, and each day Eleanor dredged her silences, to findwords: "What shall I say to him?" for of course she must say_something_! She must "have it out with him," as the phrase is.Sometimes she would decide to burst into a statement of the fact:"Somebody called 'L. D.' has a claim upon you, because she sends for youwhen 'Jacky' is sick. I am certain that 'Jacky' is your child! I amcertain that 'L.D.' is Mrs. Dale. I am certain that you don't loveme...." And he would say--Then her heart would stand still: What_would_ he say? He would say, "I stopped loving you _because you areold_." And to that would come her own terrible assent: "I had no rightto marry him--he was only nineteen. I had no right..." (Thus did thatnew-born sense of her own complicity in Maurice's sin raise its feeblevoice!) And little by little the Voice became stronger: "I didn't makehim happy _not_ because I was old, but because I was selfish...." So, inalternating gusts of anger and fear, and outraged pride,--andself-forgetting horror for Maurice,--her soul began to awake. Again andagain she counted the reasons why he had not been happy, beginning withthe obvious reason, his youth and her age: But that did not explain it."We had no children." That did not explain it! Nor, "I wasn't a goodhousekeeper"; nor, "I didn't do things with him ... I didn't skate, andwalk, and joke with him"; nor, "I didn't entertain him. Auntie alwayssaid men must be entertained. I--I am stupid." There was no explanationin such things; neither dullness nor inefficiency was enough to drive aman like Maurice Curtis into dishonor or faithlessness! Then came thereal explanation--which jealousy so rarely puts into words: "_I wasselfish._" At first, this bleak truthfulness was only momentary. Almostimmediately she was swept from the noble pain of knowing that Mauricehad been false to himself; swept from the sense of her own share in thatfalseness, swept back to the insult to _herself_! Back to self-love.With this was the fear that if she accused him, if she told him that sheknew he was false to her, if she made him very angry, he would leaveher, and go and live with this woman--who had given him a child ... Yetevery morning when she got up, she would say to herself, "I'll tell himto-day." And every night when she went to bed, "To-morrow."
Still she did not "have it out with him." Then weeks pushed in betweenher and that Sunday afternoon when the resealed telegram had been put onthe hall table. And by and by it was a month, and still she could notspeak. And after a while it was June--June, and the anniversary (whichMaurice happened to forget, and to which Eleanor's suffering love wouldnot permit her to refer!). By that June day, that marked nine of thegolden fifty years, Eleanor had done what many another sad and injuredwoman has done--dug a grave in her heart, and buried Trust and Pride init; and then watched the grave night and day. Sometimes, as she watched,her thought was: "If he would tell me the truth, even now, I wouldforgive him. It is his living a lie, every day, every minute, that Ican't bear!" Then she would look at Maurice--sitting at the piano,perhaps, playing dreamily, or standing up in front of the fireplacefilling his pipe, and poking old Bingo with his foot and telling him hewas getting too fat; "You're 'losin' your figger,' Bingo!" Eleanor,looking and listening, would say to herself, "Is he thinking of Mrs.Dale, _now_?" And all day long, when she was alone (watching the grave),she would think: "Where is he _now_? Is he with her? Oh, I think I willfollow him,--and _watch_.... Was he with her last night when he said hehad gone to the theater? ... Is he lying to me when he says he has to goaway on business, and is he really with her? It's the _lying_ I can'tbear! If only he would not lie to me!... Does she call him 'Maurice'?Perhaps she called him 'darling'?" The thought of an intimacy like_that_, was oil on the vehement flame!
"You look dreadfully, Eleanor," Mrs. Newbolt told her once, her pale,protruding eyes full of real anxiety. "I'd go and see a doctor, if Iwere you."
"I'm well enough," Eleanor said, listlessly.
"At your age," said her aunt, "you never can tell _what's goin' oninside_! Here's a piece of candy for Bingo--he's too fat. My dear fatherused to say that a man's soul and his gizzard could hold a lot ofsecrets. It's the same with women. So look out for your gizzard. Here,Bingo!"
Eleanor was silent. She had just come from Mrs. O'Brien's, where she hadgiven the slowly failing Donny a happy hour, and she was tired. Mrs.Newbolt found her alone in the garden, sitting under the shimmeringsilver poplar. The lilies were just coming into bloom, and on theage-blackened iron trellis of the veranda the wistaria had flung itspurple scarves among the thin fringes of its new leaves. The green teatable was bare: "I'd give you a cup of tea," Eleanor said, "but Mauriceis going out to dinner, so I told Mary not to keep the fire up, just forme."
"Maurice goin' out to dinner! Why, it's your weddin' day! Eleanor, if Ihave one virtue, it's candor: Maurice oughtn't to be out to dinner somuch--and on your anniversary, too! Of course, it's just what I expectedwhen you married him; but that's done, and I'm not one to keep throwin'it up at you. If you want to hold him, _now_, you've got to keep yourfigger, and set a good table. Yes, and leave the door open! Edith has afigger. She entertains him, just the way I used to entertain your dearuncle--by talkin'. I'd have Bingo put away, if I were you; he's too oldto be comfortable. You got to make him _want_ to sit by the fire andknit! But here you are, sittin' by yourself, lookin' like a dead fish. Aman don't like a dead fish--unless it's cooked! I used to broil shad foryour dear uncle." For an instant she had no words to express thatculinary perfection by which she had kept the deceased Mr. Newbolt'sstomach faithful to her. "Yes, you've got to be entertainin', or elsehe'll go up the chimney, and out to dinner, and forget what Day it is!"
Eleanor's sudden pallor made her stop midway in her torrent offrankness; it was then she said, again, really alarmed: "See a doctor!You know," she added, jocosely; "if you die, he'll marry Edith; and youwouldn't like that!"
"No," Eleanor said, faintly, "I wouldn't like that."
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