Curiously enough, though Edith's mother did not recognize what was going
on between "the children," Eleanor did. When she came back to Mercer, a
week later, she overflowed about it to Maurice. "Calf love!" she summed
it up.
"She didn't look down on that kind of love seven years ago," he thought,
cynically. But he didn't say so; no matter what his thoughts were, he
was always kind to Eleanor. Lily, over in Medfield; Lily, in the small,
secret house; Lily, with the good-looking little boy--blue-eyed,
rosy-cheeked, blond-haired!--the squalid memory of Lily, said to him,
over and over: "You are a confounded liar; so the least you can do is to
be decent to Eleanor."
So he was kind.
"_I_ couldn't bear myself," he used to think, "if I wasn't--but, _O_
Lord!"
That "_O_ Lord!" was his summing up of a growing and demoralizing sense
of the worthlessness and unreality of life. Like Solomon (and all the
rest of us, who see the universe as a mirror for ourselves!) he
appraised humanity at his valuation of himself. He didn't use Solomon's
six words, but the eight of his generation were just as exact--"_The
whole blooming outfit is a rotten lie!_ If," he reflected, "deceit isn't
on my 'Lily' line, it is on a thousand other lines." From the small
cowardices of appreciations and admirations which one did not really
feel, up through the bread-and-butter necessities of business, on into
the ridiculousness of what is called "Democracy" or "Liberty"--on, even,
into those emotional evasions of logic and reason labeled
"Religion"--all lies--all lies! he told himself. "And I," he used to
think, looking back on seven years of marriage, "I am the most
accomplished liar of the whole shootin' match!... If they get off that G.
Washington gag on me any more at the office, somebody'll get their head
punched."
All the same, even if he did say, "_O_ Lord!" he was carefully kind to
his boring wife.
But when Edith (suddenly grown up, it seemed to Maurice) came back for
the fall term, he said "_O_ Lord!" less frequently. The world began to
seem to him a less rotten place. "Nice to have you round again,
Skeezics!" he told her; and Eleanor, listening, went up to her room, and
sat with her fingers pressed hard on her eyes. "It's dreadful to have
her around! How _can_ I get rid of her?" she thought. Very often now the
flame of jealousy flared up; it scorched her whenever she recognized
Edith's "brains," whenever she noticed some gay fearlessness, or easy
capability; whenever she watched the girl's high-handed treatment of
Maurice: criticizing him! Telling him he was mean because he was always
saying he "couldn't afford things"! Declaring that she wished he would
stop his everlasting practicing--and apparently not caring a copper for
him! If Edith said, "Oh, Maurice, you are a perfect _idiot_!" Eleanor
would see him grin with pleasure; but when Eleanor put her arms around
him and kissed him, he sighed. To Maurice's wife these things were all
like oil on fire; but it never occurred to her to try to develop in
herself any of the qualities he seemed to find attractive in Edith.
Instead, she thought of that June day in the meadow by the river when he
said he loved her inefficiency--he loved her timidity, and, oh, how he
had loved her love! He had made her promise to be jealous! Eleanor was
not a reasoning person--probably no jealous woman is; but she did
recognize the fact that what made him love her then, made him impatient
with her now. This seemed to her irrational; and so, of course, it
was!--just as the tide is irrational, or the turning of the earth on its
axis is irrational. Nature has nothing to do with reason. So, in its
deep and beautiful and animal beginnings, Love, too, is irrational. It
has to ascend to Reason! But Eleanor did not know these things. All she
knew was that Maurice _hurt_ her, a dozen times a day.
She was brooding over this one Sunday afternoon in late September, when,
at the open window of her bedroom, with Bingo snoozing in her lap, she
listened to Edith, down in the garden: "How about a jug of dahlias on
the table?"
And Maurice: "Bully! Say, Edith, why couldn't we have a yellow scheme
for the grub? Orange cup, and that sort of fussy business you make out
of cheese and the yolks of eggs? And yellow cakes?"
"Splendid! I'll mix up some perfectly stunning little sponge cakes,
'Lemon Queens.' Yellow as anything!"
This was all to get ready for a tea under the silver poplar, which was
dropping yellow leaves down on the green table, and the mossy brick
path, and the chairs for the company. The Mortons were coming, and there
would be, Eleanor told herself, wearily, the usual shrieking over flat
jokes,--Edith's jokes, mostly. Her dislike of Edith was a burning ache
below her breastbone. "Maurice has her, so he doesn't want me," she
thought; then suddenly she got up and hurried downstairs. "I'll fix the
table!" she said, peremptorily.
"It's all done," Edith said; "doesn't it look pretty? Oh, Eleanor, let
me put a dahlia behind your ear! You'll look like a Spanish lady!" She
put the gorgeous flower into the soft disorder of Eleanor's dark hair,
avoiding Bingo's angry objections, and said, with open admiration,
"Eleanor, you _are_ handsome! I adore dahlias!" she announced; "those
quilly ones, red on the outside and yellow inside! There are some
stunning ones on Maple Street, where I saw that Dale woman. Wonder if
she'd sell some roots?"
The color flew into Maurice's face. "Did you get your bicycle mended?"
he said.
Instantly Edith forgot the dahlias, and plunged into bicycle
technicalities, ending with the query, "Why don't you squeeze out some
money, and buy one of those cheap little automobiles, Maurice, you mean
old thing!"
"Can't afford it," Maurice said.
But Eleanor was puzzled. There had been a hurried note in Maurice's
voice when he asked Edith about her bicycle--an imperative changing of
the subject! She looked at him wonderingly. Why should he change the
subject? Was he annoyed at Edith's bad taste in referring to the
creature? But Edith's taste was always bad, and Maurice was not
generally so sensitive to it; not as sensitive as he ought to be! Or as
he had been in those old days when he had said that Eleanor was too
lovely to know the wickedness of the world, and he "didn't want her to"!
She was really perplexed; and when Edith rushed off to make the cakes,
and Maurice went indoors, she sat there in the garden, looking absently
out through the rusty bars of the iron gate at the distant glimmer of
the river, and wondered: "Why?"
She was still wondering even when the Mortons arrived, bringing with
them--of all people!--Doctor Nelson. (_"Gosh!"_ said Maurice.) "We're
celebrating his appointment at the hospital; he's the new
superintendent!" Mrs. Morton explained.
Eleanor said, mechanically, "So glad to see you, Doctor Nelson!" But she
was saying to herself, "_Why_ was Maurice provoked when Edith spoke of
Mrs. Dale?" When some more noisy and very young people arrived, she was
too abstracted to talk to them. She was so silent that most of them
forgot her; until Mrs. Morton, suddenly remembering her existence, tried
to be conversational:
"I suppose Mr. Curtis told you of our wild adventure on the river in
August, when we got beached and spent the afternoon on a mud flat?"
"No," Eleanor said, vaguely. But afterward, when the guests had gone,
she said to Maurice, "Why didn't you tell me about your adventure with
the Mortons?"
"He told me," Edith said, complacently.
"I forgot, I suppose," Maurice said, carelessly, and lounged off into
the house to sit down at the piano--where lie immediately "forgot" not
only the adventure on the river--but even his dismay at seeing Doctor
Nelson!--who by this time was, of course, quite certain that it was a
"rum world."
That winter--although he was not conscious of it--Maurice's
"forgetfulness" in regard to his wife became more and more marked, so it
was a year of darkening loneliness for Eleanor. She was at last on that
"desert island"--which had once seemed so desirable to her;--she had
nothing to interest her except her music (and the quality of her voice
was changing, pathetically); furthermore, Maurice rarely asked her to
sing, so the passion had gone out of what voice she had! She didn't care
for books; she didn't know how to sew; and, except for Mrs. Newbolt,
there was no one she wanted to see. Often, in her empty evenings, while
Edith was in her own room studying, she sat by the fire and cried, and
broke her heart upon her desire for a child--"_then_ he would be happy,
and stay at home!"
It was a dull house; so dull that Edith made up her mind to get out of
it for her next winter at Fern Hill. When she went home for the Easter
vacation, she expressed decided opinions: "Father, once, ages ago"--she
was sitting on her father's knee, and tormenting him by trying to take
his cigar away from him--"you got off something about the dinner of
herbs and Eleanor's stalled ox--"
"Good heavens, Buster! You haven't said that before Eleanor?"
"Ha! I got a rise out of you!" Edith said, joyfully; "I haven't
mentioned it, _yet_; but I shall make a point of doing so unless you
order two pounds of candy for me, _at once_. Well, I suppose what you
meant was that Eleanor is stupid?"
"Mary," said Henry Houghton, "your blackmailing daughter is displaying a
glimmer of intelligence."
"I'm only reminding you of your own remark," Edith said, "to explain
why I want to be in one of the dormitories next winter. Eleanor _is_
stupid--though she's never fed me on stalled ox! And I think she sort of
doesn't like it because I'm not _awfully_ fond of music."
"You are an absolute heathen about music," her father said.
"Well, it bores me," Edith explained, cheerfully; "though I adore
Maurice's playing. Maurice is a lamb, and I adore just being in the
house with him! But she's nasty to him sometimes. And when she is, I'd
like to choke her!"
"Edith--Edith--" her mother remonstrated. And her father reminded her
that she must _not_ lose her temper.
"Let your other parent be a warning to you as to the horrors of an
uncontrolled temper," said Henry Houghton; "I have known your mother, in
one of her outbursts of fury, so far forget herself as to say, _'Oh,
my!'_"
Edith grinned, but insisted, "Eleanor is dull as all get out!"
"Consider the stars," Mrs. Houghton encouraged her.
But Mr. Houghton said, "Mary, you've got to do something about this
girl's English! ... You miss John Bennett?" he asked Edith (Johnny was
taking a special course in an Eastern institute of technology).
"He did well enough to fill in the chinks," Edith said, carelessly; "but
it's Maurice's being away that takes the starch out of me. He's
everlastingly tearing off on business. And when he's at home--" Edith
was suddenly grave--"of course Maurice is always 'the boy stands on the
burning deck'; but you can't help seeing that he's fed up on poor old
Eleanor! Sometimes I wonder he ever does come home! If I were in his
place, when she gets to nagging _I'd_ go right up in the air! I'd say,
well,--something. But he keeps his tongue between his teeth."
That evening, when Henry Houghton was alone with his wife, he said what
he thought about Maurice: "He _is_ standing on the burning deck of this
pathetic marriage of his, magnificently. He never bats an eyelash!
(Your daughter's slang is vulgar.)"
"Eleanor is the pathetic one," Mary Houghton said, sadly; "Maurice
has grown cynical--which is a sort of protection to him, I suppose.
Yes; I'm afraid Edith is right; she'd better be out at the school next
winter. It isn't well for a girl to see differences between a husband
and wife.... Henry, you shan't have another cigar! That's the third since
supper! Dear, what _is_ the trouble about Maurice?"
"Mary, things have come to a pretty pass, when you snoop around and
count up my cigars! I _will_ smoke!" But he withdrew an empty hand from
his cigar box, and said, sighing, "I wish I could tell you about
Maurice; Kit; but I can't betray his confidence."
"If I guessed, you wouldn't betray anything?"
"Well, no. But--"
"I guessed it a good while ago. Some foolishness about a woman, of
course. Or--or badness?" she ended, sadly.
He nodded. "I wish I was asleep whenever I think of it! Mary, there
are some pretty steep grades on Fool Hill, and he's had hard
climbing.... It's ancient history now; but I can't go into it."
"Of course not. Oh, my poor Maurice! Does Eleanor know?"
"Heavens, no! It wouldn't do."
"Honey, the unforgivable thing, to a woman, is not the sin, but the
deceit. And, besides, Eleanor loves him enough to forgive him. She would
die for him, I really believe!"
"Yet the green-eyed monster looks out of her eyes if he plays checkers
with Edith! My darling," said Henry Houghton, "as I have before
remarked, your ignorance on this one subject is colossal. _Women can't
stand truth._"
"It's a provision of nature, then, that all men are liars?" she
inquired, sweetly; "Henry, the loss of Edith's board won't trouble
Maurice much, will it?"
"Not _as_ much, of course, now that he has all his money; but he has to
scratch gravel to make four ends meet," Henry Houghton said.
"_Four_ ends!" she said; "oh, is it as bad as that? He has to
support--somebody?"
He said, "Yes; so long as you have guessed. Mary, I really must have a
smoke."
"Why _am_ I so weak-minded as to give in to you!" she sighed; then
handed him the cigar box, and scratched a match for him; he held her
wrist--the sputtering match in her fingers--lighted the cigar, blew out
the match, and kissed her hand.
"You are a snooper and a porcupine about tobacco; but otherwise quite a
nice woman," he said.