“It was the last thing I expected,” she told me.
There was no quiet in New York. I heard the noise of outdoors coming
in on us--the windows open to it, and my nerves beginning to shriek
on account of it. I thought that if there should be no noise, inside
and outside of houses, I could more quickly take in what she had said:
but the main thing, I felt, was what she in a moment would say. The
Elevated roared and clanked, half a block away on Sixth Avenue. I
cried: “How can anyone think, in New York? If it were just quieter, I
could tell you what I feel about it, Eva.” I reflected. “And I could
also try to get at how you feel about it.”
“I am glad,” she said positively. “I should think you could tell.”
“That’s what I was saying,” I returned. “There’s a numbness that drops
on me, when the windows are open and noise pours in over me; and then I
can neither think nor feel. But I do know that I am glad. I think it is
the best thing for you.”
She threw up her hands. She laughed, then, at herself and, I knew, at
me. “You did say that as if you were an ancestor!”
I realized that always at the back of my mind had been the speculation
of how Eva would take the contingency which had at last arisen. I
suppose I had felt that she was not the kind of woman who stands
up under buffets; and in spite of her brave laughter I felt sorry
for her. Her head drooped, at the moment, as if it had been beaten
down by storms. She was looking out at the trees in the back garden.
These wretched backyard trees of New York are called the Tree of
Heaven--because they grow on nothing but hope, possibly. The leaves had
started falling, and the almost bare branches were drawn in ink strokes
against the darkening sky in which the first timid stars were coming
out. Eva’s small head, bent and graceful, was sublimated and became
part of the loveliness of twilight. There was about her still figure a
suspension of all emotion. Life had stopped for a time while she looked
within. I wondered what she saw; and asked what was the matter, and
winced in anticipation of what she might say. I wondered if Nicholas,
when she had told him, had felt as if he did not dare move, that any
slight motion might precipitate the crash of his ideal.
What she said was: “I’ve always wanted a child.”
I saw that for the time she believed it. She was dramatizing herself.
Her voice broke into a sort of rippling joy, like the note of a bird,
deep in the throat but liquid. “I’m so glad! So glad! I have such a
wonderful feeling of joy, of happiness, of--contentment: as if I had
found out something.”
“Did you say this to Nicholas?” I asked impertinently.
“Certainly,” she assured me, her eyes opening wider. “How would you
have had me do it? I was bound to tell him how enchanting it was for
me to have a child. He took a long breath, as if it went through his
body and buoyed him up to the skies. He was quite perfect about it. He
couldn’t speak. He was afraid to touch me, as if I were a phantom of
some delight that had always faded from his grasp. I suspect he’d had
an ideal of me, all along, that would have satisfied me if I’d been
nice enough to find it out. This great breath that he drew--exalting
him to God, Dinah!--was so nearly a deep sigh that it startled me.
There’s a lot to Nick. But I wanted him to say it; I wanted to see what
words he would use.”
I said: “He might have felt--you describe him as being very
moved--well, then, he might have felt that words can do nothing, when a
man’s soul is touched.”
She smiled with pleasure. “Yes, I think that was the way he felt about
it. And besides, the poor darling was never good at saying things. He
has no command over words.”
I began to giggle. “There’s the sound of conjugal home life!” And we
sat quiet as mice, listening to the scratch of Nicholas’s latchkey
in the front door. He came up the stairs on tiptoe, the ridiculous
creature. He entered Eva’s study as if looking in on an invalid.
“Sweetheart!” he said lucidly. If ever I saw a man whose heart might
burst with its load of pure happiness it was Nicholas Van Suydam.
Words--in a case like this?
When he did resort to words, he employed the wrong ones. “I hope
my little woman is taking good care of herself?” he admonished her
tenderly. I fled.
I observed that the Van Suydams now embarked upon a course of coddling
Eva. Strolling down to the Brevoort for luncheon, I noticed that the
maroon brougham waited at the door of the little house in Eleventh
Street. Upon a fine afternoon, I was amused at the sight of Eva in the
brougham, seated beside her mother-in-law. She looked demure. I fancied
that she actually enjoyed the pomp of the brougham with Higginson on
the box-seat.
She telephoned to ask if I were going to Charles Glidden’s party for a
most exalted English woman novelist. “Who--” she almost gurgled--“do
you think is going with us? Nick’s mother!”
I settled myself comfortably at my end of the line. “Go on; tell me the
rest?”
“Dinah, that old woman is worthy of praise. She is making a determined
effort to see things from my point of view. The now unbroken chain
of the Van Suydam family! She hasn’t the slightest desire to see the
party, but she considers this the proper time for the family to go out
together.”
Eva knew how to make the effective entrance; she would be late. But I
would not have missed it, as none of us would: we all arrived early,
and made excuses for hovering near the door. Florence Quincy whispered
to me that she wondered if Eva had been told by some little bird that
the exalted one would also be late, thereby stealing her thunder. “Of
course you know----?” said Florence. “Ah well, she is at last a Van
Suydam!”
Molly Underhill said violently: “She is welcome to it!” Molly stuck
to me like a burr. Her face was pinched and terrible. “Look here,”
she burst out, “I’ve got to talk. Talk about myself. Or I’ll blow up.
Do you ever wonder about yourself? Do you ever wonder what it is that
holds you back?”
“From what?” I demanded impatiently.
Desperation flashed out on her face, and ran through her tense, thin
body like a poison. “It’s this way. And if you ever repeat it I’ll say
you’re lying. I am a ‘good woman’.”