GROWING PAINS
Eleanor did not yield without a struggle to the tyranny of this new
affection. The seclusion in which she and her mother lived, a natural
shyness as deep, though not as manifest, as that which her mother had so
strangely developed, and the keen ambition implanted and nourished by
Dr. Green had prevented thus far the characteristic seeking of youth for
emotion to match its own.
Nor had she been humiliated by the failure of a lover to seek her.
Waltonville had seemed to offer no one who was not too old or too young
or too dull or already married. She admired her teachers, Dr. Lister and
Dr. Scott, and would have selected Dr. Scott as a specimen of her
favorite masculine type.
Now she found herself changed. She could not rise in the morning and
fill her leisurely summer day as she had planned. The long mornings and
longer afternoons and quiet evenings were not hers to divide and use.
Instead of steady practicing at exercises and scales, she practiced the
bass or treble of duets; instead of sitting at her desk for many quiet
productive hours, she sat on the porch or in the little parlor. Plots
which she had expected to crystallize promptly now that school was over,
refused to progress beyond the point where she had left them in her
notebooks; images grew dim, words refused to fit themselves to thought,
thought itself was dull and valueless. She could put her mind upon one
object, Richard Lister; could wish for but one thing, his company.
In the mornings she was least possessed. Then she had still the hope of
his coming; the childish belief that if she practiced a certain number
of hours or wrote a certain number of pages, the fates would reward her.
If afternoon did not bring him, she tried vainly to work, as though she
would by her very striving win a blessing. The evenings, if he did not
appear, were intolerable. At bedtime she made up her mind definitely to
think of him no more, to make to-morrow a day of accomplishment. She saw
herself in a dim future greeting him placidly from some tall peak of
literary achievement, but she knew while she planned that literary
achievement, hitherto so intensely desired, allured no more. In anger at
herself she wept.
"I am a fool! I will do differently! I will not think of him!"
The excuses which she invented for him only made a bad matter worse. He
was under no obligation to come to see her. Then he did not need her as
she needed him! He was surely under no obligation to come to see her
every day since he was preparing for the splendid career which was to be
his. But she would never shut him out from any career of hers! He was
spending his days in the society of his father and mother or of
Thomasina or--with Cora Scott. The first possibility she could endure,
the second was tolerable, though it brought a pang. But that he could be
seeking out Cora Scott, little, quiet, dull Cora Scott! That could not
be believed.
A score of pin-pricking anxieties, which she would have laughed at at
another time, rose now to vex her. There was a new gown which did not
fit; there was an entirely imaginary coolness in Thomasina's greeting;
there was, especially, the outrageous use she had made of Dr. Lister's
shoelaces and Dr. Scott's den. Her unconsciousness of the offense made
it all the more terrible since it seemed to indicate a lack of fine
feeling. It was now impossible for her to understand how she could have
ever committed so grave a fault.
When Richard had not presented himself for three days, she deliberately
collected the meager facts which she knew about her mother and herself.
Her mother had been the daughter of the tavern-keeper--Eleanor saw the
present tavern-keeper. She had gone away from Waltonville and had
married and had afterwards returned. Her father was dead long since;
that she had told Eleanor definitely; and her husband was dead also, and
she could not bear to speak of either of them or be spoken to about
them. She had ample means for their simple living--enough, indeed, for
such a luxury as the finest piano in Waltonville, enough so that she and
Eleanor could go to New York or Boston for the next winter if they
wished. Her money came to her each month from a lawyer in Baltimore who
attended to her affairs. There was the total which Eleanor possessed.
It was a total with which she might have been still longer satisfied if
it had not been for Richard and the contrast between his situation and
her own. He knew all the details of his family history. One grandfather
had perished in the Civil War, another had been the honored president of
the college. One ancestor, indeed, had signed the Declaration of
Independence. If only there were a single Bent or Ginter to place beside
him, only a single Bent or Ginter about whom one could even speak!
Steadily bits of the past came into her quickened mind. There was the
insulting familiarity of Bates, the sodden drunkard. But he would have
known her mother when she lived at the tavern and he might not always
have been as he was now.
"Am I growing mad?" said Eleanor in horror of herself.
She remembered also the scolding voice which had gone on and on, which
connected itself with her cut head, and which had on another occasion
wakened her at night. She heard her mother's voice, weeping, angry, and
a single ungrammatical protest, "I ain't going to do it!"
"That I have imagined," said Eleanor.
The simple expedient of asking her mother occurred to her and was
rejected. Old habit persisted; she had never forgotten her first rebuff.
She still stood, in spite of her superior knowledge, her superior
height, and various other superiorities, in awe of little Margie.
When the need of a confidant for some of her trouble became too pressing
to be resisted, she went to Dr. Green, to whom she had gone in all
childish complaints. His independent custom of following his own will
with complete indifference to all else appeared suddenly a most
desirable quality. She would tell him about Dr. Lister's shoelaces.
Dr. Green hailed her loudly and directed her to his inner office while
he saw a patient in the outer room. The night was warm and the odor of
chemicals more oppressive than usual. Eleanor looked about with the
amused astonishment with which the chaos always filled her. How could a
human being live in such a state when all might be put to rights in a
day? In the corners on the floor was piled an accumulation of medical
journals covering five years. Dr. Green's method of filing consisted
apparently of a left-handed fling for the "Journal," a right-handed
fling for the "Lancet," and a toss over the head for the "Medical
Courier." In the fourth corner a spigot dripped water steadily into a
rusty sink. In the upper corners were dusty spider webs, and over all
the light of an unshaded lamp glared. Sitting in the midst in her
beautiful clothes, Eleanor looked like a visiting princess.
When Dr. Green came back, he sat down in the swivel chair before his
desk and looked at her carefully, as though seeking some sign of
illness. There was for an instant a hungry look in his eyes; he regarded
her a little as her mother regarded her, or as Mrs. Lister regarded
Richard. It was a look which only Thomasina had ever detected; it had
made her laugh when he talked about young men encumbering themselves
with families.
"Why don't you have a wife?" asked Eleanor.
Dr. Green stared.
"What!"
"Why don't you have a wife?" Eleanor waved her hand toward the pile of
"Lancets." "She'd fix you up."
Dr. Green continued to stare. He flushed and blinked. Eleanor had
changed somehow, had gathered from some source a new self-assurance. She
had gathered also a new beauty.
"I don't see anything the matter with you." He laid his finger tips on
her wrist. "What did you come for? To see me or to borrow a book?"
"I came to see you."
"You don't look exactly happy about it."
"I'm not happy."
"What's the matter with you?"
"I've gotten dreadfully worried about something."
"'Gotten' is obsolete, my dear, and an ugly word at best. What's
worrying you?"
Eleanor suddenly blushed scarlet. She had known for three weeks that
"Willard's Magazine" would publish "Professor Ellenborough's Last
Class."
"I've written a story."
"You have!" Dr. Green brought the seat of his swivel chair down upon the
base with a slam. "What sort of story? Where is it?"
"I sent it away." She could not help enjoying the telling. She felt her
throat swell and her fingers tingle. She forgot even Richard and
realized only that her hopes had been realized. She saw herself a
little girl in Dr. Green's buggy, traveling along a country road. Her
clasped hands lay in her lap and were covered by his strong grasp. "You
must amount to something, Eleanor," he had said. It had seemed to her
that he was almost crying.
"Your story didn't come back, did it?" said Dr. Green now.
"Three times. But at last it has been accepted by 'Willard's Magazine.'"
Dr. Green gave a little start. Though he was a purist, he allowed
himself certain vivid expressions.
"The dickens you say!"
Again the hungry look came back into his eyes and was gone. He looked
Eleanor over from top to toe, as though expecting her triumph to have
left some visible mark upon her.
"Aren't you surprised?"
"I am overwhelmed. Did you bring the story to read to me?"
"Oh, no!"
"When did you hear from them?"
"A Mr. Utterly came to tell me."
"That lily of the field! On Commencement Day? And you are telling me
_now_! Why, Eleanor!"
"I had to get used to it. Then I got worried."
"Worried? What about?"
"It is a college story, and I wrote it without ever dreaming that
Waltonville might read it or that any one would take it. I have
represented people here in it."
"Not by name!"
"No; but I said one professor in the story had dangling shoelaces."
"Whose?"
"Dr. Lister's."
"Do his shoelaces dangle? What else?"
"I described a den like Dr. Scott's."
"Is that all?"
"Yes."
"Well, as far as the shoelaces are concerned, perhaps it'll teach Lister
to keep his tied. And Scott doesn't have a den; he has a neat, dustless
resting-place from terror by day and tempest by night. Tell them it's my
den. Does your mother know?"
"Of course."
After this there was a little silence. Dr. Green looked at the floor.
"No one else, I suppose?"
"Richard Lister knows." Eleanor believed that she had succeeded in
saying the name naturally and easily.
"Richard Lister! How does he come to know?"
"He has been playing duets with me. I--I just happened to tell him."
"Richard is such a nice, sleek, silky mother's boy! I expect he'll be a
preacher. Did you read him the story?"
"No. Of course not. I wouldn't read it to any one. I only told him it
had been accepted."
"What are you going to do next?" Dr. Green rose and began to walk up and
down. He seemed possessed by a sort of rage. "Are you going to sit here
and wait for some one to say, 'Eleanor, be mine!' meanwhile making
tatting or lambrequins with String, or are you going to improve your
mind and amount to something? You haven't done anything yet, you know!
You do know that, don't you?"
"Oh, perfectly," answered Eleanor. "I don't know what I'm going to do.
It depends on mother. I--"
Dr. Green swept "mother" aside and Eleanor's further explanations with
her. "You ought to have experiences; you ought to see pictures and hear
fine music and see the world. You--why, Eleanor, you're young, you have
talent, you have the finest of prospects! I wouldn't think of anything
else. I'd make all my plans for every minute of the day to accomplish
one end. You haven't any encumbrances, you haven't any duties! But you
must realize that you can't serve two masters. If you have talent, it's
a trust, and you've got to improve it. If you don't, if you betray the
trust, you'll suffer all your life." He came back and bent over her. "My
dear Eleanor, promise to listen to what I say!"
Eleanor's voice refused to obey her bidding. She felt an excitement
almost as intense as Dr. Green's and confidence in herself returned.
"Promise me!"
"I promise."
Then she rose unsteadily. Dr. Green's eyes disturbed her. "I must go
home. Mother will want me."
Dr. Green did not go with her to the door; instead he tramped up and
down his untidy room. "'Mother will want me!'" said he when she had
gone.
Eleanor's mood lasted until morning. But when Richard did not come,
morning, afternoon, or evening, either that day or the next, ambition
became once more ashes in her mouth. It was all very well for Dr. Green
to command her to write. Writing could be accomplished only with a mind
at peace; talent was not a friend, but a fickle mistress, the companion
of happy hours and not a panacea for heartache. She could not understand
how her mother, completing her little round of daily duties, could be so
quiet, so content. Presently the sight bred resentment. No sympathetic
heart could be at rest when one's own was so ill at ease. When another
day passed and still Richard did not come, she grew, for the first time
in her life, irritable. Presently she put a question without preface as
she and her mother sat together in the little dining-room on a rainy
evening. The house had seemed all day like a prison.
"Mother, I wish you would tell me something about my father."
Mrs. Bent's head bowed itself lower over her work. The question had all
the suddenness of an unexpected thunderbolt.
"What do you want to know about him?"
"Who he was, where he came from, who his people were."
"He was tall," answered Mrs. Bent. "He hadn't many relatives. He lived
in Baltimore."
Eleanor saw her mother's hand shake. She had the uncomfortable
sensation of one who is pursuing a perfectly correct course, but who is
at the same time made to feel that he is entirely wrong.
"Could he write?"
"Could he write?" repeated Mrs. Bent.
"Stories, I mean. I thought that perhaps I had inherited my talent--if I
have any talent--from him. I thought perhaps he had written."
"I never heard anything of his writing stories." Mrs. Bent was folding
up her work as though she planned for flight, but Eleanor was determined
that the conversation should not end.
"Mother--"
Mrs. Bent stood upright.
"I've worked for you and slaved for you," said she thickly. With her
flushed face and her eagerness she looked as she had looked twenty years
before. With her prettiness something else returned, a certain
vulgarity, long shed away. "You have everything you need, don't you?"
"Why, mother!"
"I've given up enough so that you could have things, I guess, and sewed
for you and washed and ironed for you, and--"
"Oh, mother, don't!" cried Eleanor. "I didn't mean to worry you, I only
thought I would like to know. It's a sort of a mystery."
"It ain't no mystery to me," said Mrs. Bent. Then she began to cry. "I
hear somebody coming. Go in and entertain your fine beau that makes you
ashamed of your mother!"
Eleanor stood appalled. This must be finished, talked out.
"Why, mother, I--"
"There is some one on the porch, I tell you!"
Eleanor listened. Her breath came in a sob. Then she went to answer the
door. Richard was there with a book. He stood for a few minutes and
talked, then he sat down at the piano and opened the volume upon the
rack.
"I have exactly thirty minutes to stay," said he. "Shall we play?"
Eleanor sat down beside him, her hands like ice. As well play as sit,
dumbly.
When he had gone, she went to her mother's closed door. She did not mean
to persist in her inquiries, her soft "Mother!" asked only for pardon.
But Mrs. Bent made no answer. She was, however, not asleep; she
believed, lying exhausted in her little iron bed, that at last, after
years of fierce guarding of her tongue, she had done for herself.