This Side of Glory

by Gwen Bristow

  “You know there’s no chance of my dying.”

  “I know you’re dangerously anemic,” Bob said shortly.

  He gave her a great deal of iron and advice. Eleanor took the iron, but as the advice consisted of impossibilities such as nine hours’ sleep and a rest in the afternoon, she ignored it. When at last she received a letter from Kester she immediately felt so much better that she concluded that her ailment had been not anemia, but nerves. Kester was in France, he could not tell her where, but it was a lovely country, shell-scarred but trembling with spring, and full of birds chirruping above the noise of the guns.

  “I am driving a car,” wrote Kester. “I convey colonels, messages and supplies. Although the rule of the army seems to be that a guy’s having been a cobbler for twenty years is good reason for making him a cook, some genius has appreciated my talent. Driving here is quite a job. No lights before or behind. No roads half the time, and if you strike one it is so full of ruts and shell-holes it is an invitation to suicide, or if not shell-holes it’s mud. My Lord, the mud of France! I was under the impression that Louisiana was a muddy place. Don’t ever let me say so again. The only thing in Louisiana that resembles French mud is New Orleans molasses. Thank God I know how to take a car apart and put it together again, so I always get through. But it’s rather fun. If there are no lights on my car neither are there traffic lights to stop me, nor speed limits, nor white lines that I mustn’t cross, nor smart-tongued ladies to say ‘So Kester is driving you home. Have you said your prayers?’

  “I wish I could tell you more. But it isn’t allowed. Send me a new picture of yourself, and new ones of Cornelia and Philip. Those I’m carrying in my pocket are nearly worn out. How tall is Cornelia now? Does she remember me? Good night, my darling, and don’t worry about me. I’m having a grand time.”

  Eleanor kissed his signature, tingling with thankfulness that Kester was at least somewhat safer than he would have been among the barbwire barricades of the trenches. She need not worry, she told herself, Kester bore a charmed life if man ever did and was probably destined to outdrink his great-grandchildren. The children were racketing on the gallery. Carrying a picture of Kester, taken at Camp Jackson, Eleanor went to the door and watched them. They were playing soldier. In cocked hats made of newspapers—evidently supervised by Dilcy, who had some idea that all soldiers should look like the Spirit of ’76—they were marching up and down with hearthbrooms over their shoulders, singing what they believed to be a ferocious melody for the vanquishing of Germans.

  There ain’t no cooties on me,

  There ain’t no cooties on me,

  There may be cooties on some of you beauties,

  But there ain’t no cooties on me!

  Eleanor laughed at them and held out Kester’s photograph.

  “Cornelia,” she said.

  Cornelia looked around in some annoyance. “Ma’am?”

  “Come here, Cornelia.”

  “Comp’ny attention!” ordered Cornelia, and while Philip painfully held the hearthbroom—which was taller than he was—she advanced to her mother. “I’m cap’n,” she objected. “What do you want?”

  Eleanor showed her the picture. Instead of facing the camera with the well-what-do-you-want-now look of most men having their pictures taken, Kester had regarded it like a chum. Cornelia’s face broke into a smile as she looked at the picture, and her eyes softened. She had beautiful dark eyes.

  “It’s father,” she exclaimed. Smiling at the picture, she said, “Ain’t he pretty?”

  Whenever she showed her photographs of Kester, Eleanor envied him for the way Cornelia loved him. Cornelia could not be supposed to know that the house she lived in and the pleasant luxury that surrounded her were the gifts not of her father’s charm but her mother’s strength. She took it for granted that her mother was a strained and tired person too busy to play with her, and adored her recollection of Kester. Looking up at Eleanor, she asked,

  “When is he coming home?”

  “When the war’s over, dear.”

  “He’s shootin’ Boches!” said Cornelia.

  Eleanor called Philip to see the picture too. Philip surveyed it solemnly and said “Sojer boy.” He was two years old, and had no remembrance of Kester. “Father, Philip!” Cornelia corrected him severely.

  “I’m a sojer,” said Philip.

  “Yes, Philip,” said Eleanor, “you’re a soldier, and your father’s a soldier too.”

  They began to march and sing again. As she had several errands to do in town Eleanor went upstairs to get dressed. She went into Kester’s room and paused a moment by his bureau, yearning for him. His clothes were in the drawers, too orderly in their piles to suggest his presence. Among his handkerchiefs was the little silver knife with his name on the handle. Eleanor picked it up and kissed it, remembering it was the first possession of his she had ever held in her hands.

  From the window she could look out toward the fields. Again this year they were promising returns that made her feel triumphantly rich. Eleanor smiled proudly at what she was achieving.

  When she went into her own room, even the simple processes of changing her clothes reminded her of how well she was accomplishing the task she had set out to do. She liked the silky feel of warm water in her beautiful bathtub, the convenience of the electric irons that curled up the hairs straying on her neck, the ease of dressing before a mirror with side-lights. Eleanor looked herself up and down in the glass. She was no ravishing beauty, but she was a good-looking woman, tall and slender, with a figure excellently proportioned, and she carried herself well. It was good to feel herself in luxurious clothes again, a dress of crisp brown taffeta with a hat to match, boots and gloves of champagne-colored kid that looked as if they had never been worn before. It was good to drive into town in a smart little car, to be successful and to know she looked it.

  Tradespeople hurried to serve her, deferentially. That was pleasant too, when she remembered that three years ago they had been closing her accounts because she could not pay. The town looked prosperous. The shops were full of customers and the streets full of cars. In the park girls strolled under parasols that matched their dresses, gay and fluttery in the sunshine. Everybody seemed to be in good spirits. The soft rustle of the palms in the park seemed to whisper, “Thirty-cent cotton!” Thirty-two cents, Eleanor corrected her musings as she drew up in front of the drug store and honked for the services of the soda-jerker, thirty-two cents and still rising, while everybody, from herself to the druggist rejoicing in the increased ability to buy merchandise, was profiting by it.

  When the soda-jerker appeared she told him to bring her a box of face-powder and a glass of lemonade. The weather was already summery, and the lemonade looked cool in its tinkling glass. As she put her lips to the straw Eleanor noticed Isabel Valcour with a blue linen parasol on her shoulder, wandering along the sidewalk. Eleanor had not seen her for a long time. Probably she was consumed by ennui, Eleanor reflected as she watched Isabel approaching the drug store as though in search of some other idler who could help her get rid of an empty afternoon.

  Two dirty little urchins wandered along the pavement from the other direction. They caught sight of Eleanor sipping lemonade. With quick shrewdness their eyes took in Eleanor herself, her sparkling car and the parcels piled on the seat. Looking elaborately away from her the taller of the two thrust his hands into his pants pockets and began to sing as he strolled ahead.

  She’s the army contractor’s only daughter,

  Spending it now,

  Spending it now…

  Isabel glanced up, started, and burst out laughing. She turned around instantly, lowering her parasol to cover her mirth, but her shoulders were quivering as the singer, sensing a kindred spirit, sidled up to her with a practiced:

  “Lady gimmya nickel to go t’a show?”

  “Surely, I’ll give you a nickel t
o go to a show,” said Isabel. Eleanor could hear the suppressed amusement in her voice. Opening her bag Isabel bestowed nickels on both of them. As they scampered off down the street Isabel disappeared into the drug store. Eleanor pressed the horn.

  She was ashamed of her irritation. It was silly to let a street-gamin’s taunt and Isabel’s laughter annoy her. “Thanks, Mrs. Larne, come back to see us,” the soda-jerker said genially as she returned the glass, and Eleanor managed to smile at him. But as she drove toward the plantation she was calling Isabel names, and it was not until she was out of town and driving once more along the oak-lined river road, her fields stretching on either side of her, that she could calm her temper. But the sight of her cotton plants could always soothe her. She compared her own achievement with Isabel’s bored and useless life and smiled as she went indoors.

  Wyatt was waiting for her. Eleanor was surprised to see him, for he rarely came to the house.

  He greeted her more grimly than usual. “Mrs. Larne, I don’t want to scare you or anything, but you’d better start getting pickers together early. Some of the hands are getting sick.”

  “Sick? What’s the matter?”

  He examined his dusty shoe. “Well ma’am, I don’t rightly know what it is. They’re calling it the Spanish influenza.”

  “Spanish influenza? I never heard of that. Thanks for telling me. I’ll have the doctor come over. But I don’t think you need to worry, for we won’t be picking for a good while yet.”

  “No’m, but there seems to be a lot of it around. I thought you’d better know.”

  She thanked him again, and Wyatt took his lugubrious departure. Eleanor went to the telephone and rang Bob Purcell.

  “Could you drop around sometime tomorrow, Bob?”

  “Surely. What’s the matter with you now?”

  “Nothing, but some of my darkies are getting a new form of the misery.”

  “Not flu?” said Bob.

  “What?”

  “Spanish flu. Is that what they have?”

  “Yes, influenza, Wyatt called it. Why?”

  “There’s a lot of it, all of a sudden.”

  “Is it serious? What is it?”

  “I don’t know, to both questions,” said Bob frankly. “But I’ll come over.”

  In the morning he visited the quarters, and then came to her in the house. He was wearing a mask consisting of several squares of gauze tied over his mouth and chin. His eyes looked grave.

  He told her to wear a mask too, since she was with the Negroes so much, and to keep the children inside the boundary of the lawns. Nobody knew whether or not this ailment was dangerous, but there was no good in taking chances. Eleanor promised to be careful, and ordered the children’s dishes washed with antiseptic soap before their meals.

  The next day Neal Sheramy telephoned to cancel an invitation to a Sunday night supper Clara had been planning. Clara was ill “—this strange thing everybody’s getting,” said Neal. “The flu.”

  Eleanor was not concerned, as Clara spent half her life catching something or other and apparently enjoying it, but when she got a letter from Fred telling her that her sister Florence was stricken she began to be worried, for like the rest of the Upjohns Florence was almost never ill. Eleanor wrote home that she would like to come to see her, but her mother answered with a special delivery letter telling her no. “Don’t you dare run any risk of taking flu back to your youngsters,” Molly wrote. “New Orleans is full of it, and it’s a bad thing.”

  Eleanor telephoned Wyatt’s house. “I’m doing my best,” said Wyatt in answer to her queries. “But I don’t know what we’re going to use for hands if this keeps up.”

  Eleanor went out and rode through the fields. The cotton plants were covered with little green bolls. In a short time they would be open, and cotton did not wait to be picked. But who in the name of reason was going to pick it? Pickers had been hard enough to get last year when the general health had been normal. She was ready to cry out in dismay. Her laborers were well fed and housed, they did the most healthful outdoor work, yet Wyatt said they were collapsing like old men, and those who were left standing whispered sepulchrally to each other, “He’s got it,” and were too scared to work.

  During the next few weeks Eleanor had Bob Purcell come to Ardeith frequently. He could not get there as often as she wanted him, for he was working from daybreak till dark. His face was thin with fatigue. “What started this thing?” she demanded of him one morning.

  “I don’t know,” said Bob.

  “Have you heard what some people are saying, that it was German spies in this country?”

  He shrugged. “That might be credible if it hadn’t appeared almost at the same time in China and Sweden and the Fiji Islands, and Germany too.”

  “What can we do to keep well?”

  Bob took a long tired breath. “Eleanor, I don’t know what it is nor how to prevent it nor how to cure it. Nobody knows. If you get it go to bed and stay there till you get well.”

  Her hands held each other tight. “And it’s nearly time to pick cotton! What can I do?”

  “Good Lord, Eleanor, this isn’t a problem of cotton. It’s life and death. In some towns the supply of coffins has already run out.”

  He left her. Eleanor paced the floor of her room till late that night, too restless to sleep. She had read about plagues—the Black Death in Europe, the yellow fever horrors that used to sweep American ports before anybody knew that mosquitoes were more than a harmless nuisance—but it had never occurred to her that she would be called upon to fight one. After a lifetime of taking it for granted that she lived in a world where white-coated men and women in laboratories manipulated test tubes for the public health, she felt stunned before this onslaught. One thought things like this belonged in the times when people prayed to spirits instead of being vaccinated. One did not expect to stand up in the most civilized nation of the twentieth century and see it helpless before a pestilence. One thought that on a plantation equipped with every wheel and engine modern ingenuity could provide, the most scientific planter in the parish could get her cotton in!

  The next day Dilcy collapsed with flu. The children missed her, and Eleanor found that she had not known until now how much she had counted on her. While she herself was in the fields she left them with Bessie, but Bessie did not know much about caring for children and Eleanor was frightened lest they catch the infection. When she came in a day or two later to find that Mamie also was ill, she went into the kitchen and cooked their supper herself, clumsily, for she knew very little about cooking and was already trembling with weariness. The children were cross, and she herself so nervous she had a hard time being gentle with them.

  The cotton bolls opened on nearly empty fields. Eleanor put up signs facing the road and inserted advertisements in the newspapers offering work to anybody who would take it. She advertised two dollars a hundred pounds for picking, but got only scanty results. Billboards and patriotic speakers were proclaiming that America must feed Europe, clothe Europe, fill Europe’s guns, but with thousands of workers in the army, thousands at new jobs created by the war, and half the civilian population jamming the hospitals, there were simply not enough laborers to be had at any price.

  Eleanor felt sick as she watched the meager lines of pickers. Cotton was now thirty-seven cents a pound, and with the labor shortage lessening the yield the price might go higher. With this crop in the warehouse she could lay Ardeith in Kester’s lap, the best equipped plantation in the state, not only free of debt but well on the road to making him rich. But unless she performed a miracle half her cotton would never reach the warehouse.

  She sent for Wyatt. “You’ve got to do something!” she exclaimed, not because she thought he could do anything but because talking relieved her tension.

  He shook his head, gloomily watching her as she paced the floor. “I’m doing my
best, Mrs. Larne.”

  “Your best? Suppose it should rain and soak those open bolls? We’ve got to get that cotton in!”

  Wyatt sighed. “Honest, Mrs. Larne, I’m no slacker. But I can’t make people sprout out of the ground.”

  Eleanor sat down, twisting her hands together on her knees, and stood up again. “Wyatt, go back and change those signs to read two-fifty a hundred.”

  “Two-fifty a hundred? My Lord, those pickers will go nigger-rich with pink silk shirts and yellow shoes and all like that.”

  “If they get the cotton in I don’t care how nigger-rich they get. Go on and do what I told you.”

  He sighed and retreated. Eleanor walked out into the hall, racking her head for some other means of getting cotton-pickers. On the gallery the children were quarreling. She wearily pacified them and went into the kitchen to make broth for their supper. The household was in a state as muddled as her own nerves. Dilcy and Mamie were still unable to work and two of the other maids had been sent home with influenza. The servants who were left simply could not do all the work. Dust was thick, papers and toys lay scrambled on the floor because nobody had time to pick them up. Always irritated by disorder, now with dust and fretful children added to her plantation worries Eleanor felt driven to the limit of her endurance.

  She gave the children supper—used to Mamie’s delectable concoctions they grumbled till she felt like giving way to hysterics—and when at last she got them to bed Eleanor went back to the kitchen to find something for herself. She was standing by the table eating a bowl of cornflakes when Bob came to see how the servants were. He was accompanied by Violet, who was driving his car so he could rest on the road.

  While Bob was upstairs Eleanor and Violet sat looking at each other in the disordered parlor, both of them too tired to talk much. Violet had been driving Bob from house to house since early morning.

  “My idea of heaven,” she remarked, “is a place where one can eat white bread and buy a whole ton of coal at once and read every morning in the paper ‘The War Is Over.’”