by Gwen Bristow
They had not known it. It had never occurred to them that Cornelia’s handicap would bring such an ironic compensation.
Chapter Fourteen
1
When they saw Cornelia again she was being put to bed, protesting that she wasn’t sleepy and interrupting her protests with yawns. The nurse told them they could sit with her until she went to sleep, and they took their places on either side of her bed. She was complaining that she was tired of the hospital. They were glad to hear it. For so long Cornelia had been too ill to care where she was.
“How soon can I go home?” she asked.
“In a week or two,” Kester promised.
Cornelia screwed up her face. In her calendar a week or two was a long time. “I sure do miss being home. What’s everybody doing there?”
“About what they were doing when you left,” Eleanor told her. “Mamie is cooking, and Dilcy is missing you more than you miss her.”
“Is Philip there?”
“No, he’s still at grandpa Upjohn’s. But he’ll go home with us.”
“Won’t it be fun, everybody being there like we used to be! You and me and father and Philip and everybody. Is the cotton blooming?”
“No, it isn’t even planted yet. They’re plowing now.”
“I like it when the cotton blooms. In the summertime, when we can play outdoors and have watermelons, and the whole plantation looks so pretty. Mother, is it warm outdoors?”
“It’s getting warmer every day.”
“I think I ought to have some new dresses. Couldn’t I get some new ones?”
“I’ll take you shopping as soon as you’re well enough.”
“That’ll be fine. I bet I’m too tall for all my clothes. I bet you’re going to have to buy me everything new.” Cornelia spoke complacently. “I’ll have everything new when I go back to school. Father, you ought to hear me read.”
“Can you read, really?” Kester asked.
“I sure can.” Cornelia chuckled sleepily. “I can read everything in the first part of my primer.”
“You’ve learned very fast.”
“I’m smart at school. Can’t I read in my book, mother?”
“You read very well,” Eleanor agreed.
“You’ll be surprised when I show you,” Cornelia said, speaking to Kester again. “I can read good. I could read your name on that knife.”
“On what knife?”
“The knife that hurt my eye. I showed it to Philip. It had ‘Kester Larne’ printed right on the handle.”
“But my knife wasn’t—”
“Did you tell father about that big word in your lesson one day?” Eleanor asked. “Don’t you remember—bridge, I think it was, and you were the only one in the class who knew it right away?”
“That isn’t as big a word as Kester. Kester is a really big word, but I knew what it was as soon as I’d picked up the knife.”
“But my knife wasn’t there, Cornelia!” he protested. “I had it with me.”
“No you didn’t. It was right there on the table. I was going to cut out the elephant’s tusks for Philip, and I needed something with a point, and then he wanted to do it—” Cornelia interrupted herself with a yawn.
“Hadn’t we better leave her now?” Eleanor asked, though she was afraid Cornelia had already prompted Kester to ask the questions she had hoped she would not have to answer.
“She isn’t asleep yet,” Kester objected. There was a puzzled frown between his eyebrows. “But Cornelia, I’m sure—”
“I told him he was too little,” Cornelia went on sleepily. “He always wants to do everything. If he hadn’t tried to take it—” she yawned again—“I wouldn’t have got hurt.”
She was too drowsy to talk any more. When they spoke to her again she only mumbled, and in a moment more she was sound asleep. Eleanor slipped her hand out of Cornelia’s and drew the cover over her. Kester was frowning in evident perplexity. Eleanor pretended not to notice. She summoned the nurse, and leaving her with Cornelia they tiptoed back to their waiting-room.
As they went in she said in what she tried to make an encouraging voice, “She seems comfortable, doesn’t she? I hope she’ll sleep all night.”
“She doesn’t know her eyes will never be quite well,” said Kester. “Eleanor, you didn’t tell me it was my knife she cut herself with.”
“Didn’t I?”
“How did it get there, I wonder?” he persisted. “I thought I’d lost it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it enough that she’s harmed without our torturing ourselves with going over every single detail of it again? Don’t talk about it!”
“But I don’t understand,” said Kester. “I had that knife when I left Ardeith. I know I had, because I remember using it after that, several times. Who brought it back?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter!” she cried again. She wanted to say something else, anything that would turn his attention from the instrument of their damage. But she could think of nothing else to say.
“You said she hurt herself with a knife you had left on the parlor table. Where did you find it?”
“Oh—lying around somewhere.”
“Lying around,” Kester repeated. He sat down and rested his forehead on his hands. “Why don’t I take care of things!” he exclaimed, speaking more to himself than to her. “That’s the way I am. I’ve been missing that knife, wondering where I’d put it.”
She sat twisting her handkerchief into knots again. “Stop blaming yourself!” she urged him.
But with masochistic intensity Kester turned the subject over, unable to let it go. “Why didn’t I look for it? I meant to look for it. I missed it one day not long ago.”
He considered, holding his head in his hands. She thought she would have given anything she owned to keep him from pushing his knowledge any further. But he went on, speaking to the floor.
“I was using it one evening. Opening a bottle of Bourbon. I used it to peel off the tinny stuff around the cork. I must have laid it down—”
As he spoke the last phrase his head jerked upright. He sprang to his feet, reaching her in two steps.
“Eleanor, how did you get that knife?”
His question struck down the remnant of the wall she had tried to hold up for his defense. Eleanor shook her head, silently begging him not to make her answer. Kester gripped her shoulders.
“Tell me.”
Her reply rushed out of her in uneven little sentences. “I found it that night in Isabel Valcour’s bedroom. I had to take shelter there from the rain. I brought it home.”
She stopped, out of breath as though her quick words had been a long exhortation. She turned away her head, with a little choking sob in her throat as she exclaimed,
“Why did you have to ruin the only generous thing I ever tried to do for you?”
Kester released her. He walked away from her and went to the window, where he stood looking down into the street. The silence between them lasted a long time. His hands in his coat pockets, Kester was staring at the window, not moving at all. At last Eleanor stood up. She went over to him, and standing slightly behind and to one side of him she begged,
“Kester, say something to me.”
Without turning around he answered, “I don’t know whether I’ll ever get a chance to say anything else to you. So I’d like to tell you I know just the kind of person I am. I suppose people like me are born to destroy themselves.”
Eleanor wet her lips. Her mouth felt so dry she had difficulty in speaking. “Would it do you any good,” she asked, “if I told you I felt the same way about myself?”
Still looking away from her, he shook his head. Eleanor stood where she was. “What havoc we’ve wrought!” said Kester. A moment later she heard him ask, “Do you want me to go?”
&n
bsp; “No!” she cried. As she said it she felt her spine stiffen. She had just realized that Kester, not so much speaking to her as giving words to a thought that would not be quiet, had said, “What havoc we’ve wrought.” We. If he understood as she did that neither of them was blameless for what had happened they could meet squarely before it. She said, “Kester, please look at me.”
He turned slowly. Their eyes met.
“I tried not to tell you about your knife,” said Eleanor, “but maybe it’s just as well that you made me do it. Because now we can be quite honest with each other. Isabel Valcour asked me that night if I’d divorce you.”
“She did!” He was evidently astonished.
“Yes. I wouldn’t answer her. I told her if you ever asked me I’d answer you. You wouldn’t speak of this during the time since we came here, of course. You were too sorry for me. I’ve been behaving like a nervous wreck. I suppose you thought it was all because of Cornelia. It wasn’t—I’ve been worried sick about her, but that’s not everything. If you think I can stand this much longer, seeing you every day and not knowing what you think of me—”
When she stopped, with a jerk in her voice, Kester returned steadily,
“I asked you if you wanted me to go.”
“Do you want to?” Eleanor demanded. She held the side of the window tight with one hand. “There’s no use in my trying to pretend I think I’m the only one of us who’s been injured,” she went on. “I’m beginning to understand that you didn’t leave Ardeith because of anything I said to you that last evening—though I’d give half my life to take back what I said about ‘my plantation’—that was just the climax of what I’d been doing to you for years. I’d been taking away your self-respect till you got tired of fighting me. That’s the most terrible confession I’ve ever made. But I told you, so you could be sure I know as much about myself as you know about me. Now do you want to go?”
He had listened to her with a growing amazement. “How did you know that?” he asked slowly. “I’ve only begun to say it even to myself.”
“Please answer me!” she cried.
He spoke steadily, his eyes on her. “No, I don’t want to go. Not if you want me to stay.”
Eleanor caught her breath. She half put out her hands to him, then quickly drew them back. “Are you saying that because of Cornelia? Say what you would have said the day before I telephoned you.”
“Do you want me back?” he asked.
“Yes. I love you. I never knew how much I loved you until I thought you might be gone for good. But I don’t want you for the children’s sake or because you have a sense of duty or for any reason except that you love me. Did you love me the day before I telephoned?”
“I loved you that day,” said Kester, “and the day before that. I’ve always loved you. But until this minute I didn’t know you had shed any scrap of that unbearable arrogance of yours—yes, I’m being cruel, Eleanor, but I’m being as honest as you said you wanted.”
“I do want it! I love you too much to want anything else. I’ve borne all the suspense I can stand.”
“Why haven’t you said so before?” Kester exclaimed.
“How could I?”
“I wrote you where to find me.”
“Four lines like a business letter. After you had walked out of your own accord—”
“You had practically asked me to.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying. I’m a fiend when I’m angry. I can’t be cold and superior like you. Did you tell her you wanted a divorce?”
“I never mentioned your name to her in any connection whatever. Did you think I would?”
“I didn’t know what to think! Why would she tell me that unless she had reason to believe it?”
“I was beginning to think there was nothing else to do,” replied Kester. “I never said so, but I suppose it was apparent. I wasn’t anything you wanted me to be.”
“And I wasn’t anything you wanted me to be! Kester, do you love me?”
“I love you more than anything else on earth. I’ve tried not to. I’ve tried to get myself reconciled to knowing you were done with me. I had never given you anything. I wasn’t virtuous and invincible like your father, and you were judging me by him every day of your life.”
“Was I?” she asked in astonishment.
“Didn’t you know you were?”
“No, I never thought of that.”
“You kept pushing me into a mold I couldn’t fit,” said Kester, “until I wanted nothing but to be free of it. I did try to be free of it. It was no use. I kept remembering you. But you—”
“Oh, say it!” she exclaimed when she saw him hesitate. “If you don’t now you never will.”
“You didn’t like me,” said Kester. “You got along perfectly well without me. You didn’t need me.”
“That’s what I’ve done to you. I’ve made you believe it.”
“You had said so.”
“I thought I didn’t need you. I liked to believe I was strong and self-sufficient. I liked to believe I could do anything I wanted to without help. But when you weren’t there and I thought you were never coming back, if you could have known how lonely I felt, how lost and defenseless—Kester, did you say you kept remembering me? Even when you didn’t want to?”
“More then than ever. I tried so hard to forget you that I was always aware of you. I kept remembering you—the way you stand and walk, your hands on the typewriter, a hundred little details of you I’d never thought of before. I kept remembering everything that’s happened to us.”
“So much has happened to us!” she exclaimed.
He gave a faint smile of reminiscence. “I thought about all of it.”
“Do you remember the party we gave when the cotton market was falling?”
“Of course. Remember the day we got the telegram saying cotton couldn’t be sold anywhere in the world?”
“The dreadful clothes we had to wear that year? No toothpaste and nothing to eat but what grew in the garden?”
“That abominable man you brought up to buy the furniture?”
“The way he kept calling your family portraits Aunt Minnie—” Eleanor bit her lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be sentimental. We could go on like this till we were both in tears and it wouldn’t get us anywhere.”
“Oh, wouldn’t it!” Kester retorted. “You goose. You dear indescribable idiot. What makes you so afraid of yourself? What makes you so afraid of me?” He put his arms around her and drew her to him. For a moment she merely yielded, then she found that by no conscious volition of her own her arms were around him too, and she and Kester were holding each other with a joy she had thought she was never going to feel again, a sense of having belonged to each other since the beginning of time.
After awhile she moved her head backward and looked up at him. “I love you so!” she said. There seemed nothing else worth any use of words.
“To think I ever imagined I could do without you,” said Kester. “Eleanor, have you forgiven me for being the fool I’ve been?”
She nodded. “Am I forgiven too?”
“Oh my darling, stop it. Nothing seems important except that I know I’ll never lose you again.”
“You never will.” She went on seriously. “That’s not just because we love each other, Kester. We’ve always loved each other. But I think it’s because we know now how hard it is to win this and how easy it is to risk losing it. And how terribly precious it is!” She put her head on his shoulder again. They were silent for some time, then Eleanor said, “I’d like to ask you something else.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did she suggest that you go to work at the cotton station?”
“Why yes.”
“Did she remind you of how much you knew about fertilizers and pest control and tell you how glad they’d be to ge
t a man of your experience?”
“How did you know?”
“I’m wiser than I used to be. I haven’t learned very much, but at least I know I don’t know everything.” She laid her head on his shoulder again, and with a beloved gesture that she remembered he pushed her hair back from her temple and kissed it. “You thought I didn’t need you!” Eleanor whispered.
As she said it she had a strange sense of peace. She wondered if even now Kester knew how defeated she had felt until he put his arms around her.
2
The doctor gave Cornelia glasses that cleared her sight, but he advised that to save any possible taxing of her eyes she be sent to a special school where instruction was more oral than visual. Cornelia made no objection to having the glasses fitted, for she was so used to examinations of her eyes that she regarded such proceedings as part of the ordinary routine of life, but she protested volubly when Eleanor pinned a leather case containing the glasses to her dress and told her she must never be without them.
“Spectacles are for old ladies!” she exclaimed in disgusted bewilderment. At last, to her parents’ insistence, she agreed, “Well, I’ll keep them pinned to my dress a little while, till I can see the way I used to.”
Neither Kester nor Eleanor could bear yet to tell her that she would never see the way she used to. Though the case was always attached to her dress, Cornelia usually ignored it, and for the present they did not require her to do otherwise. But when they took her home they observed that except at close range she could not tell Mamie from Dilcy, and when Violet Purcell came to call, Cornelia, glancing from the window, said, “There’s a lady coming up the steps, mother,” and not until Violet came in and crossed the room to welcome her back did she exclaim, “Why hello, Miss Violet!”
But her handicap was not as great as they had feared, for Cornelia, apparently hardly realizing that she did so, made clever adjustments. They had not been at home a month before Kester and Eleanor discovered that while it was possible to speak in undertones before Philip and not attract his attention, they dared not say anything in Cornelia’s presence unless it was meant for her hearing. Evidently Cornelia had been sharpening her ears during her winter in darkness until now she listened as instinctively as most people looked. Her habit of listening supplemented her vision remarkably well. They were surprised and delighted to observe it.
