When Edith's Easter vacation was over, and she went back to Mercer, she
was followed by a letter from Mrs. Houghton to Eleanor, explaining the
plan for the school dormitory the following winter. But there was
another letter, to Maurice, addressed (discreetly) to his office. It was
from Henry Houghton, and it was to the effect that if any "unexpected
expenses" came along, and Maurice felt strapped because of the cessation
of Edith's board, he must let Mr. Houghton know; then a suggestion as to
realizing on certain securities.
"That's considerate in him," Eleanor said; "but I don't know what
'unexpected expenses' we could have?"
It was a chilly April day. Maurice happened to be laid up home with a
sore throat; Eleanor, searching for a cook, had stopped at his office
for a lease he wanted to see, and brought back with her some mail she
found on his desk.
"I knew this letter was from Mr. Houghton, so I opened it," she said, as
she handed it to him. His instant and very sharp annoyance surprised
her. "I wouldn't open your _business_ letters," she defended herself;
"but I didn't suppose you'd mind my seeing anything the Houghtons might
write--"
"I don't like to have any of my mail opened!" he said, briefly, his eyes
raking Henry Houghton's letter, and discovering (of course!) nothing in
the fine, precise handwriting which was in the least betraying. ("But
suppose he _had_ said what the 'unexpected expenses' might be!")
"We shall miss Edith's board," Eleanor said; "but, oh, I'll be so glad
to have her go!"
Maurice was silent. "If she lives in Medfield all the time, she'll be
sure and run into Lily," he thought. "The devil's in it." He was in his
bedroom, wrapped up in a blanket, shivering and hot and headachy. The
chance of Edith's "running into Lily" would, of course, be even less if
she were at Fern Hill, than it was now when she was going back and forth
in the trolley every day; but he was so uncomfortable, physically, that
he didn't think of that; and his preoccupation made him blind to
Eleanor's hurt look.
"I am willing to have you read all _my_ letters," she said.
"I'm not willing to have you read mine!" he retorted.
"Why not?" she demanded--"unless you have secrets from me."
"Oh, Eleanor, don't be an idiot!" he said, wearily.
"I believe you _have_ secrets!" she said--and burst out crying and ran
out of the room.
He called her back and apologized for his irritability; but as he got
better, he forgot that he had been irritable--he had something else to
think of! He must get down to the office and write to Mr. Houghton,
asking him to address personal letters to a post-office box. And he made
things still safer by going out to Medfield to see Lily and give her the
number of the box in case she, too, had occasion to write any "personal"
letters, which, indeed, she very rarely had. "I say _that_ for her!"
Maurice told himself. He hoped--as he always did when he had to go to
Maple Street, that he would not see It--an It which had, of course, long
before this, acquired sufficient personality to its father to be
referred to as "Jacky"; a Jacky who, in his turn, had discovered
sufficient personality in Maurice to call him "Mr. Gem'man"--a
corruption of his mother's title for her very infrequent visitor, "the
gentleman."
Jacky's "Mr. Gem'man" found the front door of the little house open,
and, looking in, saw Lily in the parlor, mounted on a ladder, hanging
wall paper. She stepped down, laughing, and moved her bucket of paste
out of his way.
"Won't you be seated?" she said. Her rosy face was beaming with
artistic satisfaction; "Ain't this paper lovely?" she demanded; "it's
one of them children's papers that's all the rage now. I call it a
reg'lar art gallery! Look at the pants on them rabbits! It pretty near
broke me to buy it. The swells put this kind of paper in 'nurseries,'
and stick their kids off in 'em; but that ain't _me_! I put it on the
parlor! Set down, won't you?"
Maurice sat down and, very much bored, listened while Lily chattered on,
with stories about Jacky:
"He says to the milkman yesterday, 'I like your shirt,' he says. And
Amos--that's his name--he said, 'You can get one like it when you're
grown up like me.' And Jacky, he says--oh, just as _sad_!--I'd rather
have it now, 'cause when I grow up, maybe I'll be a lady.'"
Maurice smiled perfunctorily.
"Ain't he the limit?" Lily demanded, proudly; "he's a reg'lar rascal! He
stuck out his tongue at the grocer's boy, yesterday, 'cause he stepped
on my pansy bed. I wish you could 'a' seen him."
Maurice swallowed a yawn. "He's fresh."
"'Course," Lily said, quickly, "I gave him a smack! He's getting a good
bringing up, Mr. Curtis. I give him a cent every morning, to say his
prayers."
Maurice didn't care a copper about Jacky's manners, or his morals,
either; but he said, carelessly, "A kid that's fresh is a bore."
Lily frowned. When Maurice, having explained about the letter box, gave
her the usual "present" she made her usual good-natured protest--but
this time there was more earnestness in it, and even a little sharpness.
"I don't need it; I've got three more mealers--well, one of 'em can't
pay me; her husband's out of work; but she don't eat more than a canary,
poor thing! I can take care of Jacky _myself_."
The emphasis puzzled Jacky's father for a moment. That Lily, seeing the
growing perfection of her handsome, naughty little boy, was becoming
uneasy lest Maurice might be moved to envy, never occurred to him. If it
had, he would of course have been enormously relieved; he might even
have played upon her fear of such an impossibility to induce her to move
away from Mercer! As it was, after listening to the account of the pansy
catastrophe, he got up to go, thankful that he had not had to lay eyes
on the child, whose voice he heard from the back yard.
Lily, friendly enough in spite of that moment of resentment, went to the
front door with him. She had grown rather stout in the last year or two,
but she was always as shiningly clean as a rose, and her little lodging
house was clean, too; she was indefatigably thorough--scrubbing and
sweeping and dusting from morning to night! "It's good business," said
little Lily; "and it is just honest, too, for they pay me good!" Her
only unbusinesslike quality was a generous kindliness, which sometimes
considered the "mealers'" purses rather than her own. She had, to be
sure, small outbursts of temper, when she "smacked" Jacky, or berated
her lodgers for wasting gas; but Jacky was smothered with kisses even
before his howls ceased, and the lodgers were placated with cookies the
very next day--but that, too, was "good business"! Her "respectability"
had become a deep satisfaction to her. She occasionally referred to
herself as "a perfect lady." Her feeling about "imperfect" ladies was of
most virulent disapproval. But she had no more spirituality than a hen.
Her face was as good-humored, and common, and pretty as ever; and she
had a fund of not too refined, but always funny, stories to tell
Maurice; so he liked her, after a fashion, and she liked him, after a
fashion, too, although she was a little afraid of him; his bored
preoccupation seemed like sternness to Lily. "Grouchiness," she called
it; "probably that's why he don't take to Jacky," she thought; "well,
it's lucky he don't, for he shouldn't have him!" But as Maurice, on the
little porch, said good-by, she really wondered at his queerness in not
taking to Jacky, who, grimy and handsome, was sitting on the ground,
spooning earth into an empty lard pail.
"Come in out o' the dirt, Sweety!" Lily called to him.
Jacky rose reluctantly, then stood looking, open-mouthed, at his
mother's visitor.
"Say," he remarked; "I kin swear."
"You don't say so!" said Maurice.
"I kin say 'dam,'" Jacky announced, gravely.
"You are a great linguist! Who instructed you in the noble art of
profanity?"
"Huh?" said Jacky, shyly.
"Who taught you?"
"Maw," said Jacky.
Maurice roared; Lily giggled,--"My soul and body! Listen to that child!
Jacky, you naughty boy, telling wrong stories. One of these days I'm
going to give you a reg'lar spanking." Then she stamped her foot, for
Jacky had settled down again in the dust; "Do you hear me? Come right in
out of the dirt! That's one on me!" she confessed, laughing: then added,
anxiously: "Say, Mr. Curtis, I do smack him when he says bad words;
honest, I do! He's getting a _good_ bringing up, though my mealers spoil
him something awful. But I'd just shake his prayers out of him, if he
forgot 'em."
Maurice, still laughing, said: "Well, don't become too proficient,
Jacobus. Good-by," he said again. And as he said it, Eleanor, in a
trolley car, glanced out of the window and saw him.
"Why, there's Maurice!" she said; and motioned to the conductor to stop.
Hunting for a cook had brought her to this impossible suburb, where
Maurice, no doubt, was trying to buy or sell a house. "I'll get out and
walk home with him," she thought, eagerly. But the car would not stop
until the end of the second block, and when she hurried back Maurice had
disappeared. He had either gone off in another direction, or else
entered the house; but she could not remember which house!--those
gingerbread tenements were all so much alike that it was impossible to
be sure on which of the small porches she had seen her husband, and a
fat, common-looking woman, and a child playing in the yard. All she
could do was to wander up and down the block, looking at every front
door in the hope that he would appear; as he didn't, she finally took
the next car into town.
"Did you sell the house this afternoon?" she asked Maurice at dinner
that night; and he, remembering how part of his afternoon had been
spent, said he hadn't any particular house on the string at the moment.
"Then what took you to Medfield?" Eleanor asked, simply.
"Medfield!"
"I saw you out there this afternoon," she said; "you were talking to a
woman. I supposed she was a tenant. I got off the car to walk home with
you, but I wasn't sure of the house; they were all alike."
"What were you doing in Medfield?"
"Oh, Hannah has given notice; I was hunting for a cook. I heard of one
out on Bell Street."
"Did you find her?"
"No," Eleanor said, sighing, "it's perfectly awful!"
"Too bad!" her husband sympathized.
In the parlor, after dinner, while Eleanor was getting out the cards
for solitaire, Maurice, tingling with alarm and irritation, sat down
at the piano and banged out all sorts of chords and discords. "Lily'll
_have_ to move," he was saying to himself. (Bang--_Bang!_) His
Imagination raced with the possibilities of what would have happened
if Eleanor had found the house which was "like all the other houses,"
and heard his "good-by" to Lily, or perhaps even caught the latest
addition to Jacky's vocabulary! "The jig would have been up," he thought.
(Bang--Crash!)... "She'll _have_ to move! Suppose Eleanor took it into
her head to hunt her up? She's capable of it!" (Crash!)
Eleanor's absorption in the cook she could not find kept her for nearly
forty-eight hours from speculation as to what, if not office business,
took Maurice to Medfield. When she did begin to speculate she said to
herself, "He doesn't tell me things about his business!" Then she was
stabbed again by his annoyance because she had opened the letter from
Mr. Houghton; then by his secretiveness in regard to that adventure on
the river with Mrs. Morton. (He had told Edith!) Then this--then
that--and by and by a tiny heap of nothings, that implied reserves. He
wasn't confidential. She told him _everything_! She never kept a thing
from him! And he didn't even tell her why he was over in Medfield when
no real-estate matters took him there. Why should he _not_ tell her? And
when she said that, the inevitable answer came: He didn't tell her,
because he didn't want her to know! Perhaps he had friends there? No. No
friends of Maurice's could live in such a locality. Well, perhaps there
was some woman? Even as she said this, she was ashamed. She knew she
didn't believe it. Of course there wasn't any woman!... But, at any
rate, he had interests in Medfield that he did not tell her about. She
hinted this to him at breakfast the next morning. She had not meant to
speak of it; she knew she would be sorry if she did. Eleanor was
incapable of analysis, but she was, in her pitiful way, aware that
jealousy, _when articulate_, is almost always vulgar--perhaps because
the decorums of breeding (which insist that, for the sake of others,
one's own pain must be hidden) are not propped up by the reserves of
pride. At any rate, she was not often publicly bitter to Maurice. This
time, however, she was.
"Apparently," she said, "Maurice has acquaintances on Maple Street whom
I don't know."
"The élite," Edith remarked, facetiously; "his lovely Mrs. Dale lives
there."
Maurice's start was perceptible.
"Perhaps it was Mrs. Dale you went to see?" Eleanor said.
Maurice, trained in these years of furtiveness to self-control, said,
"Does she live on Maple Street, Edith?"
"I guess so. The time I rescued her little boy and her flower pot, ages
ago, she was going into a house on Maple Street."
"I saw Maurice in Medfield on Thursday," said Eleanor; "and he doesn't
seem to want to say what he was doing there!"
"I am perfectly willing to tell you what I was doing," he retorted; "I
went from our office to see the woman who rents the house."
Eleanor's slow mind accepted this entirely true and successfully false
remark with only the wonder of wounded love. "Why didn't he say that at
first?" she thought; "why does he hide things from me?"
Maurice, however, made sure of that "hiding." Eleanor's attack upon him
frightened him so badly that that very afternoon, after office hours
(Eleanor being safe in bed with a headache), he went to see Lily. Her
astonishment at another visit so soon was obvious; she was still further
astonished when he told her why he had come. He hated to tell her. To
speak of Eleanor offended his taste--but it had to be done. So,
stammering, he began--but broke off:
"Send that child away!"
"Run out in the yard, Sweety," Lily commanded.
"Won't," said Jacky.
"Clear out!" Maurice said, sharply, and Jacky obeyed like a shot--but
paused on the porch to turn the ferociously clanging doorbell round and
round and round. "Well," Maurice began, "I'll tell you what's
happened... Lily! Make him stop!"
"Say, now, Jacky, stop," Lily called; but Jacky, seized apparently with
a new idea, had already stopped, and was running out on to the pavement.
So again Maurice began his story. Lily's instant and sympathetic
understanding was very reassuring. He even caught himself, under the
comfort of her quick co-operation, ranging himself with her, and saying
_"we."_ "We've got to guard against anything happening, you know."
"Oh, my soul and body, yes!" Lily agreed; "it would be too bad, and no
sense, either; you and me just acquaintances. 'Course I'll move, Mr.
Curtis. But, there! I hate to leave my garden--and I've just papered
this room! And I don't know where to go, either," she ended, with a
worried look.
"How would you like to go to New York?" he said, eagerly.
She shook her head: "I've got a lot of friends in this neighborhood. But
there's a two-family house on Ash Street--"
"Say," said Jacky, in the hall; "I got--"
"Oh, but you must leave Medfield!" he protested; "she"--that "she" made
him wince--"she may try to hunt you up."
"She can't. She don't know my name."
Maurice felt as if privacy were being pulled away from his soul, as skin
might be flayed from living flesh. "But you see," he began, huskily,
"there's a--a girl who lives with us; and she--she mentioned your name."
Then, cringing, he told her about Edith.
Lily looked blankly puzzled; then she remembered; "Why, yes, sure
enough! It was right at the gate--oh, as much as four years ago; I
slipped, and she grabbed Jacky. Yes; it comes back to me; she told me
she seen me the time we got ducked. 'Course, I gave her the glassy eye,
and said I didn't remember the gentleman in the boat with her. And she
caught on that I lived here? Well, now, ain't the world small?"
"Damned small," Maurice said, dryly.
"Say," said Jacky, from the doorway, "I got a--"
"Well, she--I mean this young lady--told my--ah, wife that you lived on
Maple Street, and--" He was stammering with angry embarrassment; Lily
gave a cluck of dismay. "Confound it!" said Maurice; "what'll we do?"
"Now, don't you worry!" Lily said, cheerfully. "If she ever speaks to me
again, I'll say, 'Why, you have the advantage of me!'"
Her mincing politeness made him laugh, in spite of his irritation. "I
think you'd like it in New York?" he urged.
Lily's amber eyes were full of sympathy--but she was firm: "I wouldn't
live in New York for anything!"
"Mr. Gem'man," said Jacky, sidling crabwise into the room to the shelter
of his mother's skirt; "I--"
"Say, now, Sweety, be quiet! No, Mr. Curtis; I only go into real good
society, and I've always heard that New York ladies ain't what they
should be. And, besides, I want a garden for Jacky. I'll tell you what
I'll do! I'll take the top flat in that house on Ash Street. It has
three little rooms I could let. There's a widow lady's been asking me to
go in on it with her; it has a garden back of it Jacky could play
in--last summer there was a reg'lar hedge of golden glow inside the
fence! Mr. Curtis, you'd 'a' laughed! He pinched an orange off a
hand-cart yesterday, just as cute! 'Course I gave him a good slap, and
paid the man; but I had to laugh, he was so smart. And he's got going
now, on God--since I've been paying him to say his prayers. Well, I
suppose I'll have to be going to church one of these days," she said,
resignedly. "The questions he asks about God are something fierce! _I_
don't know how to answer 'em. Crazy to know what God eats--I told him
bad boys."
"Lily, I don't think--_Thunder and guns!_" said Maurice, leaping to his
feet and rubbing his ankle; "Lily, call him off! The little wretch put
his teeth into me!"
Lily, horrified, slapped her son, who explained, bawling, "Well, b-b-but
he didn't let on he heard me tellin' him that I--"
"I _felt_ you," Maurice said, laughing; "Gosh, Lily! He's cut his
eyeteeth--I'll say that for him!" He poked Jacky with the toe of his
boot, good-naturedly: "Don't howl, Jacobus. Sorry I hurt your feelings.
Lily, what I was going to say was, I don't believe that Ash Street place
is what you want?"
"Yes, it is. The widow lady is a dressmaker, and she has three children.
We were talking about it only yesterday. Her father's feeble-minded,
poor old man! I take him in some doughnuts whenever I fry 'em. Mr.
Curtis, don't worry; I'll fix it, somehow! And until I get moved, I
won't answer the bell here. Look! I'll give you a key, and you can come
in without ringing if you want to."
"No--_no_! I don't want a key! I wouldn't take a key for a million
dollars!"
Lily's quick flush showed how innocent her offer had been. "I suppose
that doesn't sound very high toned--to offer a gentleman a key? But
I'll tell you! I ain't giving any door keys to my house. Jacky ain't
ever going to feel funny about his mother," she said, sharply.
It was on the tip of Maurice's tongue to say, "Nor about his father!"
but he was silent. It was the first time his mind had articulated his
paternity, and the mere word made him dumb with disgust. Lily, however,
was her kind little self again, full of promises to "clear out," and
reassurances that "_she_" would never get on to it.
It was then that the grimness of the situation for Maurice lightened for
a ridiculous moment. Jacky, breathing very hard, peered from behind his
mother, and stretched out to Maurice an extremely dirty, tightly
clenched fist. "I got a--a pre-present for you," he explained, panting.
Maurice, in a great hurry to get away, paused to put out his hand, in
which his son placed, very gently, a slimy, half-smoked cigar. "Found
it," Jacky said, in a stertorous whisper, "in the gutter."
It was impossible not to laugh, and Maurice swallowed his impatience
long enough to say, "Jacobus, you overwhelm me!" Then he took his
departure, holding the gift between a reluctant thumb and finger. "Funny
little beggar," he said to himself, and pitched the stub into the gutter
from which Jacky had salvaged it; he didn't look back to see his son
hanging over the palings, watching the fate of his present with stricken
eyes... So it was that, when the day came that Eleanor did actually
begin to search for what was hidden, Maple Street was empty of
possibilities; Lily had flitted away into the secrecy of the two-family
house on Ash Street.
It was nearly three months before the search began. Edith had gone home,
Mrs. Newbolt was at the sea-shore, and Maurice was in and out--away for
two or three days at a time on office business, and when at home absent
almost every evening with some of those youthful acquaintances who
seemed ignorant of Eleanor's existence. So there were long hours when,
except for her little old dog, she was entirely alone--alone, to brood
over Maurice's queer look when she had accused him of having an
"acquaintance on Maple Street"; and by and by she said, "I'll find out
who it is!" Yet she had moments of trying to tear from her mind the idea
of any concealment, because the mere suspicion was an insult to Maurice!
She had occasional high moments of saying, "I _won't_ think he has
secrets from me; I'll trust him." But still, because suspicion is the
diversion of an empty mind, she played with it, as one might play with a
dagger, careful only not to let it touch the quick of belief. After a
while she deluded herself into thinking that, to exonerate Maurice, she
must prove the suspicion false! It was only fair to him to do that. So
she must find the woman whom she had seen on the porch with him. If she
wasn't Mrs. Dale, that would "prove" that everything was all right, and
that Maurice's presence there only meant that he was attending to office
business; nothing to be jealous about in _that_! And if the woman _was_
Mrs. Dale? Eleanor's throat contracted so sharply that she gasped. But
again and again she put off the search for the exonerating proof--for
she was ashamed of herself, "I'll do it to-morrow." ... "I'll do it next
week."
It was a scorching, windy July day when she took her first defiling step
and "did it." There had been a breakfast-table discussion of a vacation
at Green Hill, the usual invitation having been received.
"Do go," Maurice had urged. "I'll do what I did last year--hang around
here, and go to the ball games, and come up to Green Hill for Sundays."
He was acutely anxious to have her go.
She was silent. "_Why_ does he want to be alone?" she thought;
"why--unless he goes over to Medfield?" Then, in sudden decision, she
said to herself, "I will find out why, to-day!" But she was afraid that
Maurice would, somehow, guess what she was going to do; so, to throw him
quite off the track, she told him that Donny O'Brien was sick again; "I
must go and see him this morning," she said.
Maurice, reading the sports page of the morning paper, said, "Too bad!"
and went on reading. He had no interest in his wife's movements; the
two-family house on Ash Street was beyond her range!
An hour later, Eleanor, giving Bingo a cooky to console him for being
left at home, started out into the blazing heat, saying to herself:
"I'll recognize her the minute I see her. Of course I _know_ she isn't
the Dale woman, but I want to _prove_ that she isn't!"
Her plan was to ring the bell at every one of the gingerbread houses on
that block on Maple Street, and ask if Mrs. Dale lived there? If she was
not to be found, that would prove that Maurice had not gone to see her.
If she was found, why, then--well, then Eleanor would say that she had
heard that the house was in the market? If Mrs. Dale said it was not,
that would show that it wasn't "office business" which had brought
Maurice to that porch!
On Maple Street the heat blazed up from the untidy pavement, and a harsh
wind was whirling little spirals of dust up and down the dry gutter.
Eleanor's heart was beating so smotheringly that when her first ring was
answered she could scarcely speak: "Does Mrs. Dale live here?"
"No," said the girl who opened the door, "there ain't nobody by that
name livin' here."
And at the next door: "Mrs. Dale? No. This is Mrs. Mahoney's house."
It was at the sixth house, where some dusty pansies were drying up
under the little bay window, that a woman whose red, soapy hands had
just left the wash tub, said:
"Some folks with that name lived here before I took the house. But they
moved away. She was real nice; used to give candy to the children round
here. She was a widow lady. She told me her husband's name was Joseph.
Was it her you was looking for?"
"I don't know her husband's name," Eleanor said.
"Her baby had measles when mine did," the woman went on; "I lived across
the street, then. But I took a fancy to the house, because she'd papered
the parlor so handsome, so I moved in the first of May, when she got
out."
A little cold, prickling thrill ran down Eleanor's back. She had told
herself that "Maurice had a secret"; but she had not really believed
that the secret was about Mrs. Dale. She had been sure, in the bottom of
her heart, that she would be able to "prove" that the woman he had been
talking to that day was not Mrs. Dale.
Now, she had proved--that she was.
Eleanor swayed a little, and put her hand out to clutch at the porch
railing. The woman exclaimed:
"Come in and sit down! I'll get you a glass of water."
Eleanor followed her into the kitchen and sat down on a wooden chair.
She was silent, but she whitened slowly. The mistress of the house,
scared at her pallor, ran to draw a tumbler of water from the faucet in
the sink; she held it to Eleanor's lips, apologizing for her wet hands:
"I was tryin' to get my wash out.... Where do you feel bad?"
"It's so hot, that's all," Eleanor said, faintly: "I--I'm not
ill--thank you very much." She tried to smile, but the ruthless glare of
sunshine through the open kitchen door showed her face strained, as if
in physical suffering.
"I'm awfully sorry I can't tell you where Mrs. Dale lives," the woman
said, sympathetically. "Was she a friend of yours?" Eleanor shook her
head. "There! I'll tell you who maybe could tell you--the doctor. He
took care of her baby. Doctor Nelson--"
"Nelson!"
"He's the hospital doctor now. Why don't you ask him?"
"Thank you," said Eleanor vaguely. She rose, saying she felt better and
was much obliged. Then she went out on to the porch, and down the broken
steps to the windy scorching street.
She was certain: Maurice had gone to Medfield to see Mrs. Dale...
_Why?_
She was quite calm, so calm that she found herself thinking that she had
forgotten to get an yeast cake for Mary. "I'll get it as I go home," she
thought. But as she stood waiting for the car it occurred to her that
she had better think things out before she went home. Better not see
Maurice until she had decided just how she should tell him that there
was no use having secrets from her! That she _knew_ he was seeing Mrs.
Dale! Then he would have to tell her _why_ he was seeing her... There
could be only one reason... For a moment she was suffocated by that
"reason"! She let the returning car pass, and signaled the one going out
into the country; she would go, she told herself, to the end of the
route, and by that time she would know what to do. The car was crowded,
but a kindly faced young woman rose and offered her a seat. Eleanor
declined it, although her knees were trembling.
"Oh, do take it!" the woman urged, pleasantly, and Eleanor could not
resist sinking into it.
"You are very kind," she said, smiling faintly.
The woman smiled, too, and said, "Well, I always think what I'd like
anyone to do for my mother, if _she_ couldn't get a seat in a car! I
guess you're about her age."
Eleanor hardly heard her; she sat staring out of the window--staring at
that same landscape on which she and Maurice had gazed in the unseeing
ecstasy of their fifty-four minutes of married life! "He said we would
come back in fifty years--not by ourselves." As she said that, a thought
stabbed her! _There was a child that day, in the yard!_
When she saw that the car was approaching the end of the route, she
thought of the locust tree, and the blossoming grass, and the whispering
river. "I'll go there, and think," she said.
"All out!" said the conductor; and she rose and walked, stumbling once
or twice, and with one hand outstretched, as if--in the dazzling July
day--she had to feel her way in an enveloping darkness. She went down
the country road, where the bordering weeds were white with dust, toward
that field of young love, and clover, and blue sky.
When she reached the river, curving around the meadow, brown and shallow
in the midsummer droughts, she saw that the big locust was long past
blossoming, but some elderberry bushes, in full bloom, made the air
heavy with acrid perfume; the grass, starred by daisies, and with here
and there a clump of black-eyed Susans, was ready for mowing, and was
tugging at its anchoring roots, blowing, and bending, and rippling in
the wind, just as it had that other day!... "And I sat right here, by
the tree," she said, "and he lay there--I remember the exact place. And
he took my hand--"
Her mind whirled like a merry-go-round: "Well, I knew he was hiding
something. I wish I had seen Doctor Nelson, and asked him where she
lives. I wonder if he's the Mortons' friend?... If I don't get that
yeast cake to Mary before lunch, she can't set the rolls.... Edith saw
her with a child five years ago. Why"--her mind stumbled still farther
back--"why, the very day Edith arrived in Mercer, Maurice had been
looking at some house in Medfield, where the tenant had a sick child.
That was why he was late in meeting Mrs. Houghton!... The child had
measles. I wish I had gone to see Doctor Nelson! Then I would have
known.... I can get some rolls at the bakery, and Mary needn't set them
for dinner. I sang 'O Spring.'" She put her hands over her face, but
there were no tears. "He kissed the earth, he was so happy. When did he
stop being happy? What made him stop?... I wonder if there are any
snakes here?--Oh, I _must_ think what to do!" Again her mind flew off at
so violent a tangent that she felt dizzy. "I didn't tell Mary what to
have for dinner.... He gave her his coat, that time when the boat
upset.... She was all painted, he said so." She picked three strands of
grass and began to braid them together: "He did that; he made the ring,
and put it over my wedding ring." Mechanically she opened her
pocketbook, and took out the little envelope, shabby now, with years of
being carried there. She lifted the flap, and looked at the crumbling
circle. Then she put it back again, carefully, and went on with her
toilsome thinking: "I'll tell him I know that he went to see the Dale
woman. ... He said we had been married fifty-four minutes. It's eight
years and one month. He thinks I'm old. Well, I am. That woman in the
car thought I was her mother's age, and _she_ must have been thirty! Why
did he stop loving me? He hates Mary's cooking. He said Edith could make
soup out of a paving stone and a blade of grass. Edith is rude to me
about music, and he doesn't mind! How vulgar girls are, nowadays. Oh--I
_hate_ her!... Mary'll give notice if I say anything about her soup."
Suddenly through this welter of anger and despair a small, confused
thought struggled up; it was so unexpected that she actually gasped: He
hadn't quite lied to her! "There _was_ office business!" Some
real-estate transfer must have been put through, because--"Mrs. Dale had
moved"! In her relief, Eleanor burst into violent crying; he had not
_entirely_ lied! To be sure, he didn't say that the woman whom he had
gone "from the office" to see, the woman who rented the house, was Mrs.
Dale; in that, he had not been frank; he kept the name back--but that
was only a reserve! Only a harmless secrecy. There was nothing _wrong_
in renting a house to the Dale woman! As Eleanor said this to herself,
it was as if cool water flowed over flame-licked flesh. Yes; he didn't
talk to her as he did to Edith of business matters; he didn't tell her
about real-estate transactions; but that didn't mean that the Dale woman
was anything to him! She was crying hard, now; "He just isn't frank,
that's all." She could bear _that_; it was cruel, but she could bear it!
And it was a protection to Maurice, too; it saved him from the slur of
being suspected. "Oh, I am ashamed to have suspected him!" she thought;
"how dreadful in me! But I've proved that I was wrong." When she said
that she knew, in a numb way, that after this she must not play with the
dagger of an unbelieved suspicion. She recognized that this sort of
thing may be a mental diversion--but it is dangerous. If she allowed
herself to do it again, she might really be stabbed; she might lose the
saving certainty that he had not lied to her--that he had only been "not
frank."
Suddenly she remembered how unwilling he had been, years ago, to talk of
the creature to her! She smiled faintly at his foolishness. Perhaps he
didn't want to talk of her now? Men are so absurd about their wives! Her
heart thrilled at such precious absurdity. As for seeing that doctor--of
course she wouldn't see him! She didn't _need_ to see him. And, anyhow,
she wouldn't, for anything in the world, have him, or anybody else,
suppose that she had had even a thought that Maurice wasn't--all right!
"He just wasn't quite frank; that was all." ... Oh, she had been wicked
to suspect him! "He would never forgive me if he knew I had thought of
such a thing, He must never know it."
In the comfort of her own remorse, and the reassurance of his half
frankness, she walked back to the station and waited, in the midday
heat, for the returning car. Her head had begun to ache, but she said to
herself that she must not disappoint little Donny. So she went, in the
blazing sun, to the old washerwoman's house, climbed three flights of
stairs, and found the boy in bed, flushed with worry for fear "Miss
Eleanor" wasn't coming. She took the little feeble body in her arms,
and sat down in the steamy kitchen by an open window, where Donny could
see, on the clothes lines that stretched like gigantic spiderwebs across
a narrow courtyard, shirts and drawers, flapping and kicking and
bellying in the high, hot wind. She talked to him, and said that if his
grandmother would hire a piano, she would give him music lessons;--and
all the while her sore mind was wondering how old the mother of that
woman in the car was? Then she sang to Donny--little merry, silly songs
that made him smile:
"The King of France,
And forty thousand men,
Marched up a hill--"
She stopped short; Edith had thrown "The King of France" at her, that
day of the picnic, when she had cringed away from the water and the
slimy stones, and climbed up on the bank where she had been told to
"guard the girl's shoes and stockings"! "Oh, I'll be so glad to get her
and her 'brains' out of the house!" Eleanor thought. But her voice,
lovely still, though fraying with the years--went on:
"Marched up a hill--
_And
then
marched
down
again_!"
When, with a splitting headache, she toiled home through the heat, she
said to herself: "He ought to have been frank, and told me the woman was
Mrs. Dale; I wouldn't have minded, for I know such a person couldn't
have interested him. She had no figure, and she looked stupid. He
couldn't have said _she_ had 'brains'! That girl in the car was
impertinent."