Luella's presence cast Pheeny into a profounder dismay than she had ever
felt about the cook. After all, Delia was only a hired girl, while
Luella was an old sweetheart. Delia had put wicked ideas into Eddie's
head and now Luella would finish him. As Ellaphine's mother had always
said, "Men have to have novelty."
The Lord Himself had never seen old Mr. Govers stray an inch aside from
the straight path of fidelity; but his wife had enhanced him with a
lifelong suspicion that eventually established itself as historical
fact.
Pheeny could find some excuse for Eddie's Don Juanity with the common
clay of Delia, especially as she never quite believed her own beliefs in
that affair; but Luella was different. Luella had been a rival. The
merest courtesy to Luella was an unpardonable affront to every sacred
right of successful rivalry.
The submerged bitternesses that had gathered in her soul like bubbles at
the bottom of a hot kettle came showering upward now, and her heart
simmered and thrummed, ready to boil over if the heat were not removed.
One day, soon, Luella fastened on Eddie as he left the factory to go
home to dinner. She had loitered about, hoping to engage the eye of
Jabez, who was now the most important widower in town. Luella had
elected him for her next; but he was away, and she whetted her wits on
Eddie. She walked at his side, excruciating him with her glib memories
of old times and the mad devotion he had cherished for her then.
He felt that it was unfaithful of him even to listen to her, but he
could not spur up courage enough to bolt and run. He welcomed the sight
of his own gate as an asylum of refuge. To his horror, Luella stopped
and continued her chatter, draping herself in emotional attitudes and
italicizing her coquetries. Her eyes seemed to drawl languorous words
that her lips dared not voice; and she committed the heinous offense of
plucking at Eddie's coat-sleeve and clinging to his hand. Then she
walked on like an erect cobra.
Eddie's very back had felt that Pheeny was watching him from one of the
windows or from all the windows; for when, at last, he achieved the rude
victory of breaking away from Luella and turned toward the porch, every
window was a somber eye of reproach.
He would not have looked so guilty if he had been guilty. He shuffled
into the house like a boy who comes home late from swimming; and when he
called aloud "Pheeny! Oh, Pheeny!" his voice cracked and his throat was
uncertain with phlegm.
He found Pheeny up-stairs in their room, with the door closed. He
closed it after him when he went in. He feigned a care-free joy at the
sight of her, and stumbled over his own foot as he crossed the room and
put his arms about her, where she sat in the big rocking-chair; but she
brushed his arms aside and bent her cheek away from his pursed lips.
This startled him, and he gasped:
"Why, what's the matter, honey? Why don't you kiss me?"
"You don't want to kiss me," she muttered.
"Why don't I?" he exclaimed.
"Because I'm not pirty. I'm not young. I'm not round or tall. I haven't
got nice clothes or those terrible manners that men like in women.
You're tired of me. I don't blame you; but you don't have to kiss me,
and you don't want to."
It was a silly sort of contest for so old a couple; but their souls felt
as young as childhood, or younger, and this debate was all-important. He
caught at her again and tried to drag her head to his lips, pleading
inanely:
"Of course I want to kiss you, honey! Of course I do! Please--please
don't be this way!"
But she evaded him still, and glared at him as from a great distance,
sneering rather at herself than him and using that old byword of
Luella's:
"What can you see in me?" Suddenly she challenged him: "Who do you kiss
when you kiss me?"
He stared at her for a while as if he were not sure who she was. Then he
sat down on the broad arm of her chair and took one of her hands in
his--the hand with the wedding-ring on it--and seemed to talk to the
hand more than to her, lifting the fingers one after another and
studying each digit as though it had a separate personality--as perhaps
it had.