by Gwen Bristow
He treats me, she thought despairingly, like a mistress, a mistress he has to woo and please and charm because he doesn’t dare admit her behind the barriers of his personal pride—what have I done?
Again and again she tried to bridge the gap by pretending it did not exist. She gossiped about what their friends had been doing in his absence, and he was pleasantly attentive. She talked about the plantation, and he was interested, but when she asked his advice she rarely received more than a polite, “But Eleanor, I hardly know. Everything is so different here, I’m afraid my ideas are antiquated.”
“You know more about cotton than I ever will!” she protested.
“Don’t pretend to flatter me, sugar. You’ve done it all so magnificently, you don’t need anything I can tell you.”
Eleanor fought the emptiness with a passionate yearning. She could not get through.
“Do you love me, Kester?”
“Sweetheart, how can you ask me? When your picture wasn’t out of my pocket five minutes during the whole war except when I was showing it around?”
“Do you still love me as much as that?”
“I’ve always loved you, I love you now, I always will. Don’t you know it?”
“Yes, but I like to hear you say it.” That was all she could think of to answer.
He did love her, she could not doubt it. When Kester invited an army friend of his to spend a week at Ardeith, the guest walked directly to her with an eager smile, exclaiming, “And you are Eleanor? Forgive me if I can’t think of you except by your first name, but it’s all I heard from Kester for six months at Camp Jackson.” Eleanor laughed, more grateful than she would have liked for him to guess, and told him to go on calling her that. He told her about Kester’s popularity at camp —“Everybody liked him, but I suppose you’re used to hearing that?”—and later, when Kester had gone to select a special Bourbon for a nightcap, he added, “I never saw a man so proud of his wife. His voice positively lowered with reverence when he spoke of you.”
They gave a party the next evening, Kester playing his rôle of superb host and evidently enjoying it. Eleanor watched him, baffled. With other people he seemed not to have changed. It was only toward herself that he seemed to feel a curious shyness. His attitude was, she was sure, unintentional on his part and he did not know she sensed it, but she felt he wanted something of her that she was not giving him and that he thought it useless to ask for.
When their guest had gone Eleanor tried again. She asked Kester what he thought of the postwar conferences. They exchanged opinions. How did he regard Mr. Wilson’s idea of a League of Nations? Not very highly, Kester said, he admired Mr. Wilson but he thought the United States had had enough of Europe and should mind its own business for a change. It was no use. He was as affectionately polite as he would have been to one of her sisters.
By the end of the summer Eleanor was nearly desperate with pleasant pretenses. She had thought the ripe fields, heavy with such a harvest as he had never seen before at Ardeith, would rouse him, but Kester’s admiration, though she could find no fault with a word of it, seemed to be merely admiration; he did not, as she used to see him, take an open boll in his hand and stroke the cotton as tenderly as if it had been the hair of a beloved woman. He was not enthusiastic about anything that she could see, except parties—and he was drinking too much, though she so dreaded widening the breach between them that she never said so—and the only event that seemed to rouse his unalloyed interest was Cornelia’s beginning to go to school. He got a great deal of pleasure from his children. Eleanor wearily returned her attention to the work of getting the cotton in.
She had no trouble finding pickers this year, for the influx of returning soldiers was beginning to cause a labor surplus and Wyatt had more applicants than he could use. The price of cotton was still high, as most of the product of recent years had been nitrated and shot away, and the world was in dire need of clothes; and Eleanor felt a resurgence of hope as she calculated what the profits would be. Unable to believe that Kester would remain indifferent to the plantation, Eleanor welcomed the realization that there was a problem now on which she needed his advice. With the war over, less cotton would be wanted and it would be wise to substitute other crops on part of the Ardeith acres. She asked Kester about it one afternoon after dinner.
“Do you mean you want to try truck-farming?” he asked.
“I thought we might. What vegetables grow best here?”
“Strawberries?” he suggested.
“We can try them. Do you think it would be a good idea to try a number of crops in different places, and see what we can do? Of course that would mean taking a good-sized loss at first, but we can afford it.”
He smiled a little. “Can’t we afford to stay with cotton?”
“Oh, we can, of course, but there’s no reason to. Cotton prices are going to drop. I’m certain we’ll do better with food crops on part of the land. Don’t you think it would be fun to experiment, anyway?”
“But you’ve got the whole place organized for cotton. And we can live, and live well, Eleanor, on the production we have now, even if the price goes back to ten cents a pound.”
“But there’s no sense in living on that if we don’t have to!” she exclaimed.
“I think there’s pretty good sense to it,” said Kester. “We can be mighty comfortable.”
“But there’s so much else to do, Kester! So much we can do. It’s so exciting, to work at a challenge like this. To organize it and feel it grow, and be rewarded when you’ve done it right.”
“But you don’t get time to do anything else,” said Kester. He stood up. “Try reorganization if you want to. Put in strawberries very early to catch the February market. And don’t risk anything on figs. They’re so hard to ship they aren’t worth it. Try—oh, lettuce, cabbage, celery, corn, shallots, turnips—they’ll all grow well.”
She shook her head at him, wondering. “When you know so much about it,” she said, “it’s strange that you aren’t interested in doing it. Why Kester, we can be rich!”
Kester smiled. “You like being rich, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?”
He came over to where she sat. Bending over her, he pushed her hair back from her temple and kissed her. “You’re an odd person. You’re not like anybody else I’ve ever known.” He added, “It’s frightfully hot. I think I’ll have Cameo make a Tom Collins.”
“I’ll order it.” Eleanor gave the order at the telephone, tempted at the same time to scold Kester for drinking and make him mad. At the moment it seemed to her that any honest expression from him, even anger, would be easier to bear than his courteous apathy. “I’m going to town,” she said abruptly. “I’ve some errands to do.”
She got out the car and drove hurriedly down the avenue. Once on the river road she went more slowly. She had no errands. She simply drove, welcoming the cool wind in her hair, asking herself over and over, What have I done? What is the matter with him? Why doesn’t he like me?
She had no answer.
3
When the cotton was baled Wyatt came to her triumphantly. Eleanor went out on the gallery to meet him, and found him looking almost jaunty, his hat on the back of his head.
“Here you are, Mrs. Larne,” he said. He handed her his statement and stood back, waiting for his laurels.
Eleanor glanced down, and gasped. The crop totaled thirteen hundred and twenty-six bales.
“Wonderful!” she exclaimed.
“Yes ma’am,” said Wyatt.
“Great work, Wyatt.” She shook his hand warmly.
The cheeks on either side of his lantern jaw began to crease with one of his rare proud grins. “Well ma’am, I wouldn’t say it was bad, myself.”
“I think this calls for a bonus,” said Eleanor.
“You mean it, Mrs. Larne?”
“Certainly I mean it. Shall we say a dollar a bale?”
“Well now, ma’am, that’s nice of you. You’re mighty fair.”
“Wait a minute. I want to tell my husband.” She ran to the door and called. “Kester! Come here.”
“What’s all the excitement?” Kester asked, coming out to the gallery. “Oh hello, Wyatt.”
“Good morning, Mr. Larne. Nice day.”
“Kester,” Eleanor was exclaiming, “do you know what we’ve done this year? Thirteen hundred and twenty-six bales!”
“Holy smoke,” said Kester. He gave Wyatt a smile of congratulation. “I’m beginning to think you must be as smart as my wife says you are.”
Mellowed by his bonus, Wyatt was in a mood to be generous. “Well sir, I wouldn’t take all the credit. Not more than a third of it, I’d say. I never did see a lady could get things done like this lady here.”
“Yes, she’s great, isn’t she?”
“Yes sir. You’re mighty right she is. Thirteen hundred and twenty-six bales.” Wyatt gave a glance around as though taking in all of Ardeith. “Not bad for a plantation that six years ago was barely topping eight hundred, is it?”
“Not bad at all,” said Kester dryly.
“Don’t go yet, Wyatt,” Eleanor said to him. “I’ll write that check for you.” She hurried in, and when she came out with the check in her hand she saw Kester leaning against one of the gallery columns in affable conversation with the overseer. Wyatt was evidently finding him pleasant to talk to.
“—at Louisiana State,” Wyatt was saying. “Doing mighty well up there. Got a scholarship for this year, pretty good, don’t you think?—competitive examination in a big university like that?”
“Who’s that you’re talking about?” Eleanor inquired.
Wyatt glanced down as though embarrassed. “Why—er, my daughter, Mrs. Larne.”
“Oh.” She recalled having seen a young girl around his house, but they had never discussed his family. “Here’s the check, Wyatt, and thank you.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She sat down on the step and began giving him instructions about having the tractors overhauled before the winter’s work. While she was talking Kester wandered off.
He gets intimate with everybody but me, she thought while she and Wyatt were discussing the tractors. Thirteen hundred bales of cotton and all he does is smile politely, he looked more interested in hearing that Wyatt’s daughter had won a scholarship. If Wyatt’s so proud of her it’s odd he never told me about it. What have I done to Kester? What except work till I collapsed making this the finest cotton plantation in Louisiana?
“Yes, that’s all,” she said briskly to Wyatt. “If I think of anything else that needs doing I’ll call you in the morning.”
She went into the house. Kester was in the library reading. Eleanor went across the hall to the parlor and sat down, a magazine on her knee so she could pretend to be reading if he came in. She was hurt more deeply than he had ever hurt her. For nearly six years, since she had first learned Ardeith was in danger, she had given herself to Kester’s plantation without stint, sustained by her passionate anticipation of the day when she could give him her dream of Ardeith complete. And now, apparently, he did not want it. She thought she could have borne anything more easily than this pleasant indifference.
At supper Kester was talkative and amusing, as always, and when they went up to tell the children good night he recounted a bedtime story that sent them into happy chuckles. At least with Cornelia and Philip he had no reticences.
“Have you asked anybody to come in this evening?” she inquired as they left the nursery.
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“Then come into my room. We can talk.”
“All right. I did want to talk to you.”
She was glad of it. A fire was burning in her room—mainly for decorative purposes, as there was little need for it yet—and Eleanor listened eagerly as she sat down by the hearth. Kester was taking a travel folder out of his pocket.
“This came in the mail today. It’s about a Central American cruise, lasting six weeks. Wouldn’t you like a holiday?”
“I’d love it!” she exclaimed fervently. If they could get away now, in the idleness of the Gulf they might talk to each other frankly and recapture what they had lost. “In fact,” she added, “I’d like it so much I can start getting ready tomorrow.”
“Good,” said Kester. “This sounds like the best cruise of the sort I’ve read about in a long time, a beautiful ship, stopping at all the interesting ports.”
“Let me see.” He handed her the folder. The pictures and descriptions were inviting. But the boat was not scheduled to leave New Orleans until the first of February, and when Eleanor saw the date she looked up dubiously. “But Kester, they’re always having Central American cruises. Couldn’t we take one this fall?”
“Why? This one sounds perfect.” He chuckled. “You always want to be in such a hurry. Most women would be glad of two or three months to buy clothes.”
“Silly. I can do all the shopping I’d need in a week. I was just thinking, if we took this trip we wouldn’t get back till sometime in March, and that’s just the wrong time to be away from the plantation.”
“Oh, Eleanor,” he objected, “what have we got an overseer for?”
“Wyatt’s a cotton man,” she reminded him. “If we’re going to try any experimental crops—don’t you remember we talked about that the other day?—we ought to be here.”
“I’d forgotten that.” He picked up the folder, which lay in her lap, and returned it to his pocket.
“I’ll write New Orleans tomorrow,” Eleanor went on, “asking about boats leaving in the next few weeks. That won’t interfere with our work here.” She smiled at the fire. “Experimental crops are costly at best, and there’s no reason to deplete our profits any more than we can help.”
Kester sat down. He looked at the fire. Suddenly he stood up again. “Eleanor,” he exclaimed, “don’t you ever think about anything but money?”
“Why, Kester!” She sat forward. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, don’t you ever stop gloating over the money you’ve made? Don’t you want to do anything besides go on making more?”
“I—don’t—understand,” she said slowly. “Aren’t you glad we’re prosperous at last?”
“Of course I’m glad. But you aren’t just comfortably prosperous. You run money through your fingers like a miser. What’s happened to you?” He spoke vehemently.
Eleanor pushed her hand over her forehead. “So that’s it,” she said. “That’s why you don’t like me.” She was hurt, and she was still bewildered.
“I love you very much,” Kester said earnestly. “But I don’t like this streak that’s come out in you, this passion for making money as though a bank account were the only important thing in the world. Eleanor, I don’t care whether we take a trip now or next spring, or whether or not we take one at all, but I do care about your thinking of everything on the face of the earth in terms of what it costs! Ardeith is organized now to run with only a reasonable amount of supervision—can’t you let it alone? You’re so imbedded in the idea of profits!”
“Wait a minute,” said Eleanor. She spoke slowly, trying to be reasonable. “Kester, you don’t understand. For so long I’ve not had the chance to think of anything else. When you left, Ardeith wasn’t half paid for. I had to battle the highest prices and the worst labor shortage in history. I had to think about money every hour I was awake.”
“But you don’t have to now. We don’t owe a cent to anybody on earth. We’re making a splendid income, much more than enough for everything we need.”
“But now that we’ve got such a victory,” she pled, “we can’t let it go! We can’t slip back to being indolent dreamers!”
“Nobody’s asking you to. But you don’t have to work incessantly to get rich, as you did during the war.”
Eleanor shook her head at him. She was still hurt, but she felt a sense of relief at the clearing of the mist. “But shouldn’t we run the place carefully? Efficiently? I can’t believe we should sit back and take it easily now! I like the sense of doing a job well. I want the results of all I worked for, Kester! You don’t know what it was like. You weren’t here.”
“You’re damn right I wasn’t here,” Kester said in a low voice.
She stood up. “If you had been—”
“If I had been here the place wouldn’t be like this.”
“Aren’t you pleased with what I did?” she cried in astonishment. “Don’t you like to have Ardeith free and rich and all your own again? Think what it is now, compared to what it used to be!”
“I’ve thought of nothing else all summer,” said Kester.
“Aren’t you glad the mortgages are paid?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
“Then what? Please tell me! Aren’t you proud? Don’t you love it?”
“Love it? In the name of God, Eleanor, how can anybody love living in a place that looks like the Ford factory?”
He turned around and walked to the door, while she stood still, breathless with amazement. His hand on the doorknob, he went on.
“There. I’ve said it. I’ve tried not to say it every day since I’ve been at home. I hate what you’ve done to Ardeith. I hate every button and every engine. I hate that God-damned bathroom and your telephones and your adding machines. This place was beautiful when I had it. It was lazy and wasteful and nobody did very much work and everybody had a grand time. Now it’s a mill for the manufacture of cotton-bales. It’s hideous.”
He opened the door.
“Wait a minute,” said Eleanor.
