CHAPTER XXXII
Eleanor, letting herself into her silent house, saw, with relief, thatthe library was dark, and knew that Maurice had gone to the station andshe could be alone. She felt her way into the room, blundering againsthis big chair; the fire was almost out, and without waiting to turn onthe light she thrust some kindling under a charred log and knelt downand took up the bellows. A spark brightened, ran backward under the filmof ashes, then a flame hesitated, caught--and there was a little winkingblaze.
"Another failure," Eleanor said. She remembered with what eager hope shehad started for Lily's house; "I was going to 'bring him home' with me!What a fool I was! ... I always fail," she said. Once more, she had"marched up a hill--and--then--marched--down--again"! Her sense offailure was like a dragging weight under her breastbone! She had notmade Maurice happy; she had not given him children; she had not keptEdith out of his life. Failure! Failure! "But he loves me; he said so,when I told him I forgave him about Lily. Of course I oughtn't to havemarried him. But I loved him ... so much. And I did want to have just alittle happiness! I never had had any." She sat there, the bellows inher white, ineffectual hands, looking into the fire; how capable Lily'shands were! She remembered the sturdy left hand, and that shiny band ofgold ... Then she looked at her own slender wedding ring, and that madeher think of the circle of braided grass; and the locust blossoms; andthe field--and the children who were to come there on the weddinganniversaries! And now--Maurice's child called another woman"mother"!... Well, she had tried to bring him back to Maurice; tried,and failed, with hideous humiliation--for, instead of bringing Jackyback, this "mother" had brought her back!... "_And she paid my carfare!_" It was intolerable. "I must send her five cents, somehow!"
She sat on the floor, leaning against Maurice's chair, until midnight;the log burned through, broke apart, and smoldered into ashes. Once sheput her cheek down on the broad arm of the chair, then kissed it--forhis hand had rested on it!--his dear young hand--In the deepeningchilliness, watching the ashes, she ached with the sense of her lastfailure; but most of the time she thought of Edith, and of what shebelieved she had read in those humorous, candid eyes. "She dared,_before me_!--to show him that she was in love with him! He doesn't carefor her--I know that. But I won't have her come here, to my own house,and make love to him. How can I keep her from coming? Oh, if I couldonly get Jacky!"
But she couldn't get him. She had accepted that as final. The talk inLily's parlor proved that there was not the slightest hope of gettingJacky. So the only thing for her to do was to keep Edith out of herhouse. When, at nearly one o'clock, shivering, she went up to her room,she was absorbed in thinking how she could do this. With any other girlit would have been simple enough; never invite her! But not Edith. Edithcame without an invitation. Edith had, Eleanor thought, "no delicacy."She had always been that way. She had always lacked ordinary refinement!From the very first, she had run after Maurice. "She is capable of_kissing_ him," Eleanor told herself; "and saying she did it because hewas like a brother!" Strangely enough, in this blaze of jealousy she hadno flicker of resentment at Lily! Lily (now that she had seen her) wasto Eleanor merely the woman to whom Jacky belonged. Looking back onthose months that followed her discovery of Lily, and contrasting theagony she had felt then with her despair about Edith now, she wasfaintly surprised at the difference in her pain. This was probablybecause faithlessness of the body is not so deadly an insult to Love asfaithlessness of the mind. But Eleanor did not, of course, make any suchexplanation. She just said to herself that Maurice had been a boy whenhe had been untrue to her, and she herself had been, in some ways, toblame; and he had confessed, and been forgiven. So Lily was now of noconsequence--except as she interfered with Eleanor's passionate wish tohave Jacky. So she did not hate Lily, or fear her (though she washumiliated at that car fare!). But she did hate Edith, and fear of herwas agony.... So she would, somehow, keep her out of the house!
Just as she was getting into bed, she wiped her eyes, then cringed at agust of perfumery--and realized that she had brought Lily's handkerchiefback with her! It was a last abasement: the woman's horriblehandkerchief. She burst into hysterical weeping.... The next morning,when she came down to breakfast, her face was haggard with thoseravaging tears, and with the fatigue of hating. Even before she had hercoffee, she burned the scented scrap of machine-embroidered linen,pressing it down between the logs in the library fireplace; but shecould not burn her hate; it burned her!
She was so worn out that when, a little before luncheon, Edith suddenlycame breezily in, she was, at first, too confused to know what to say toher.... It was an incredibly mild day; on the shady side of the backyard there was still a sooty heap of melting snow, but the sky wasturquoise, soaring without a cloud and brimmed with light, so that theshadows of the bare branches of the poplar, clear-cut like jet,crisscrossed on the brick path; in the border, the brown fangs of thetulips had bitten up through the wet earth, and two militant crocuseshad raised their tight-furled purple standards. Eleanor, tempted by thesunshine, had come here, muffled up in an elderly white shawl, to sit bythe little painted table--built so long ago for Edith's pleasure! Shehad put old Bingo's basket in the sun, and stroked him gently; he wasvery helpless now, and ate nothing except from her hands.
"Poor little Bingo!" Eleanor said; "dear little Bingo!" Bingo growled,and Eleanor looked up to see why--Edith was on the iron veranda.
"Hullo!" Edith said, gayly; "isn't it a wonderful day? I just ran in--"She came down the twisted stairway and, unasked and smiling, sat down atthe table. "Bingo! Don't you know your friends? One would think I was aburglar! Oh, Eleanor, the tulips are up! Do you remember when Mauriceand I planted them?"
Eleanor's throat tightened. She made some gasping assent.
"I came 'round," Edith said--her frank eyes looked straight intoEleanor's eyes, dark and agonized--"I ran in, because I'm afraid youthought, yesterday, that I wanted to quarter myself on you? And I justwanted to say, don't give it a thought! I perfectly understand thatsometimes it's inconvenient to have company, and--"
"It's not inconvenient to have company," Eleanor said.
Edith stopped short. ("What a dead give-away!" she thought; "shedislikes me!") Then she tried, generously, to cover the "give-away" up:She said something about guests and servants: "We're having an awfultime at Green Hill--servants are the limit! When a maid stays six weeks,we call her an old family retainer!"
Eleanor said, "I have no difficulty with maids. That is not why I prefernot to have ... company."
By this time, of course, Edith's one thought was to get away, withdignity; but dignity, when you've had your face slapped, is almostimpossible. So Edith (being Edith!) chose Truth, and didn't troubleherself with dignity! "Eleanor," she said, "I know it's me you don'twant. I felt it last night. I'm afraid I've done something that hasoffended you. Have I? Truly, Eleanor, I haven't meant to! What is it?Let's talk it out. Eleanor, what _have_ I done?" She put her hands downon Eleanor's, clasped rigidly on the table.
"Please!" Eleanor said, and drew her hands away.
"Oh," Edith said, pitifully, "you are troubled!"
Eleanor said, with a gasp: "Not at all ... Edith, I am afraid I must askyou to ... excuse me. I'm busy."
Edith was too amazed to speak; she could not, indeed, think of anythingto say! This wasn't "dislike." "Why, she _hates_ me!" she thought. "Whydoes she hate me? Shall I not notice it? Shall I talk about somethingelse?" But she could not talk of anything else; she could only speak herswift, honest thought: "Eleanor, why do you dislike me? Maurice and Ihave been friends--we have been like brother and sister--ever since Ican remember. Oh, Eleanor, I want _you_ to like me, too! Please don'tkeep me away from you and Maurice!"
Eleanor said, rapidly: "He's not your brother; and it would be difficultto keep you away from him. You go to his office to find him."
There was a dead silence. Edith grew very pale. At last she understood.Eleanor was jealous ... Of her! They looked at each other, the angrywoman and the d
umfounded girl. "Jealous? Of _me_?" Edith thought. "Why_me_? Maurice only cares for me as if I was his sister! ... And I don'tdo Eleanor any harm by--loving him." ... Eleanor was gasping out atorrent of assailing words:
"Girls are different from what they were in my day. Then, they didn'topenly run after men! Now, apparently, they do. Certainly _you_ do. Youalways have. I'm not blind, Edith. I have known what was going on; whenyou were living with us and I had a headache, you used to talk to him,and try and be clever--to make him think I was dull, when it was onlythat--I was too ill to talk! And you kept him down in the garden untilmidnight, when he might have been sitting with me on the porch. And youmade him go skating. And now you _look_ at him! I know what that means.A girl doesn't look that way at a man, unless--"
There was dead silence.
"Unless she's in love with him. But don't think that, though you are inlove with him, he cares for _you_! He does not. He cares for no one butme. He told me so."
Silence.
"Can you deny that you care for my husband?" Edith opened her lips--andclosed them again. "You don't deny it," Eleanor said; "you _can't_." Sheput her head down on her arms on the table; her fifty years engulfedher. She said, in a whisper, "He doesn't love me."
Instantly Edith's arms were around her. "Eleanor, dear! Don't--don't! Hedoes love you--he does! I'd perfectly hate him if he didn't! Oh,Eleanor, poor Eleanor! Don't cry; Maurice _does_ love you. He doesn'tcare a copper for me!" The tears were running down her face. She bentand kissed Eleanor's hands, clenched on the table, and then tried todraw the gray head against her tender young breast.
Eleanor put out frantic hands, as if to push away some suffocatingpressure. Both of these women--Lily, with her car fare and herhandkerchief; Edith, with her impudent "advice" to Maurice not to havesecrets from his wife--pitied her! She would not be pitied by them!
"Don't touch me!" she said, furiously; "_you love my husband_."
Edith heard her own blood pounding in her ears.
"Don't you?" said Eleanor; her face was furrowed with pain; "Don't you?"
It was a moment of naked truth. "I have loved Maurice," Edith said,steadily, "ever since I was a child. I always shall. I would like tolove you, too, Eleanor, if you would let me. But nothing--_nothing_!shall ever break up my ... affection for Maurice."
"You might as well call it love."
Edith, rising, said, very low: "Well, I will call it love. I am notashamed. I am not wronging you. You have no need to be jealous of me,Eleanor. He cares nothing for me."
Eleanor struck the table with her clenched fists. "You shall never havehim!" she said.
Edith turned, silently, and went up the veranda stairs and out of thehouse.
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