When Eleanor got her breath, after that crazy outbreak, she rushed up to
her own room, bolted the door, fell on her knees at her bedside, and
told herself in frantic gasps, that she would _fight_ Edith Houghton!
Grapple with her! Beat her away from Maurice! "I must _do_ something--do
something--"
But what? There was only one weapon with which she could vanquish
Edith--Maurice's love for his son. _Jacky!_ She must have Jacky ...
But how could she get him?
She knew she couldn't get him with Lily's consent. Frantic with jealousy
as she was, she recognized that! Yet, over and over, during the week
that followed that hour in the garden with Edith, she said to herself,
"If Maurice had Jacky, Edith would be nothing to him." ... It was at
this point that one day something made her add, "_Suppose he had Lily,
too?_" Then he could have Jacky.
"If I were dead, he could marry Lily."
At first this was just one of those vague thoughts that blew through her
mind, as straws and dead leaves blow down a dreary street. But this
straw caught, so to speak, and more straws gathered and heaped about it.
The idea lodged, and another idea lodged with it: If, to get his child,
he married Jacky's mother, Edith would never reach him! And if, by
dying, Eleanor gave Maurice his child, he would always love her for her
gift; she would always be "wonderful." And Edith? Why, he couldn't, he
_couldn't_--if his wife died to give him Jacky--think of Edith again!
Jacky, Eleanor thought, viciously, "would slam the door in Edith's
face!"
Perhaps, if Maurice had been at home, instead of being obliged to
prolong that western business trip, the sanity of his presence would
have swept the straws and dead leaves away and left Eleanor's mind
bleak, of course, with disappointment about Jacky and dread of
Edith--but sound. As it was, alone in her melancholy, uncomfortable
house, tiny innumerable "reasons" for considering the one way by which
Maurice could get Jacky, heaped and heaped above common sense: ten years
ago Mrs. Newbolt said that if Eleanor had not "caught" Maurice when he
was young, he would have taken Edith; that was a straw. Two years ago a
woman in the street car offered her a seat, because she looked as old as
_her_ mother. Another straw! Lily supposed she was Maurice's mother! A
straw.... Edith admitted--had impudently flung into Eleanor's face!--the
confession that she was "in love with him!"--and Edith was to be in town
for three months. Oh, what a sheaf of straws! Edith would see him
constantly. She would "look at him"! Could Maurice stand that? Wouldn't
what little love he felt for his old wife go down under the wicked
assault of those "looks"?--unless he had Jacky! Jacky would "slam the
door."
Eleanor said things like this many times a day. Straws! Straws! And they
showed the way the wind was blowing. Sometimes, in the suffocating dust
of fear that the wind raised she even forgot her purpose of making
Maurice happy, in a violent urge to make it impossible for Edith
Houghton to triumph over her. But the other thought--the crazy, nobler
thought!--was, on the whole, dominant: "Maurice would be happy if he had
a child. I couldn't give him a child of my own, but I can give him
Jacky." Yet once in a while she balanced the advantages and
disadvantages of the one way in which Jacky could be given: _Lily_?
Could Maurice endure Lily? She thought of that parlor, of Lily's
vulgarity, of the raucous note in her voice when those flashes of anger
pierced like claws through the furry softness of her good nature; she
thought of the reek of scent on the handkerchief. Could he endure Lily?
Yet she was efficient; she would make him comfortable. "I never made
him comfortable," she thought. "And he doesn't love her; so I wouldn't
so terribly mind her being here--any more than I'd mind a housekeeper.
But I wouldn't want her to call him 'Maurice.' I think I'll put that
into my letter to him. I'll say that I will ask, as a last favor, that
he will not let her call him 'Maurice.'"
For by this time she had added another straw to the pile of rubbish in
her mind: _she would write him a letter_. In it she would tell him that
she was going to ... die, so that he could marry Lily and have Jacky!
Then came the mental postscript, which would not, of course, be written;
she would make it possible for him to marry Lily--_and impossible for
him to marry Edith_! And by and by she got so close to her mean and
noble purpose--a gift in one dead hand and a sword in the other!--that
she began to think of ways and means. How could she die? She couldn't
buy morphine without a prescription, and she couldn't possibly get a
prescription. But there were other things that people did,--dreadful
things! She knew she couldn't do anything "dreadful." Maurice had a
revolver in his bureau drawer, upstairs--but she didn't know how to
make it "go off"; and if she had known, she couldn't do it; it would
be "dreadful." Well; a rope? No! Horrible! She had once seen a
picture ... she shuddered at the memory of that picture. _That_ was
impossible! Sometimes any way--every way!--seemed impossible. Once,
wandering aimlessly about the thawing back yard, she stood for a long
time at the iron gate, staring at the glimmer, a block away, of the
river--"our river," Maurice used to call it. But in town, "their"
river--flowing!--flowing! was filmed with oil, and washed against slimy
piles, and carried a hideous flotsam of human rubbish; once down below
the bridge she had seen a drowned cat slopping back and forth among
orange skins and straw bottle covers. The river, in town, was as
"dreadful" as those other impossible things! Back in the meadows it was
different--brown and clear where it rippled over shallows and lisped
around that strip of clean sand, and darkly smooth out in the deep
current;--the deep current? Why! _that_ was possible! Of course there
were "things" in the water that she might step on--slimy, creeping
things!--which she was so afraid of. She remembered how afraid she had
been that night on the mountain, of snakes. But the water was clean.
She must have stood there a long time; the maids, in the basement
laundry, said afterward that they saw her, her white hands clutching the
rusty bars of the gate, looking down toward the river, for nearly an
hour. Then Bingo whined, and she went into the house to comfort him; and
as she stroked him gently, she said, "Yes, ... our river would be
possible." But she would get so wet! "My skirts would be wet ..."
So three days went by in profound preoccupation. Her mind was a
battlefield, over which, back and forth, reeling and trampling, Love and
Jealousy--old enemies but now allies!--flung themselves against Reason,
which had no support but Fear. Each day Maurice's friendly letters
arrived; one of them--as Jealousy began to rout Reason and Love to cast
out Fear--she actually forgot to open! Mrs. Newbolt called her up on the
telephone once, and said, "Come 'round to dinner; my new cook is pretty
poor, but she's better than yours."
Eleanor said she had a little cold. "Cold?" said Mrs. Newbolt. "My
gracious! don't come near _me_! I used to tell your dear uncle I was
more afraid of a cold than I was of Satan! He said a cold _was_ Satan;
and I said--" Eleanor hung up the receiver.
So she was alone--and the wind blew, and the straws and leaves danced
over that battlefield of her empty mind, and she said:
"I'll give him Jacky," and then she said, "Our river." And then she
said, "But I must hurry!" He had written that he might reach home by the
end of the week. "He might come to-night! I must do it--before he comes
home." She said that while the March dawn was gray against the windows
of her bedroom, and the house was still. She lay in bed until, at six,
she heard the creak of the attic stairs and Mary's step as she crept
down to the kitchen, the silver basket clattering faintly on her arm.
Then she rose and dressed; once she paused to look at herself in the
glass: those gray hairs! ... Edith had called his attention to them so
many years ago! It was a long time since it had been worth while to pull
them out. ... All that morning she moved about the house like one in a
dream. She was thinking what she would say in her letter to him, and
wondering, now and then, vaguely, what it would be like, _afterward_?
She ate no luncheon, though she sat down at the table. She just crumbled
up a piece of bread; then rose, and went into the library to Maurice's
desk... She sat there for a long time, making idle scratches on the
blotting paper; her elbow on the desk, her forehead in her hand, she sat
and scrawled his initials--and hers--and his. And then, after about an
hour, she wrote:
... I want you to have Jacky. When I am dead you can get him, because
you can marry Lily. Of course I oughtn't to have married you, but--
Here she paused for a long time.
I loved you. I'd rather she didn't call you Maurice. But I want you to
have Jacky; so marry her, and you will have him. I am not jealous, you
see. You won't call me jealous any more, will you? And, besides, I love
little Jacky, too. See that he has music lessons.
Another pause... Many thoughts... Many straws and dead leaves... "Edith
will never enter the house, if Lily is here--with Jacky.... Oh--I hate
her."
You will believe I love you, won't you, darling? I wish I hadn't married
you; I didn't mean to do you any harm. I just loved you, and I thought I
could make you happy. I know now that I didn't. Forgive me, darling, for
marrying you...
Again a long pause....
I don't mind dying at all, if I can give you what you want. And I don't
mind your marrying Lily. I am sure she can make good cake--tell her to
try that chocolate cake you liked so much. I tried it twice, but it was
heavy. I forgot the baking powder. Make her call you "Mr. Curtis." Oh,
Maurice--you will believe I love you?--even if I am--
She put her pen down and buried her face in her arms folded on his desk;
she couldn't seem to write that word of three letters which she had
supposed summed up the tragedy, begun on that June day in the field and
ending, she told herself, on this March day, in the same place. So, by
and by, instead of writing "old," she wrote
"a poor housekeeper."
Then she pondered on how she should sign the letter, and after a while
she wrote:
"STAR."
She looked at the radiant word, and then kissed it. By and by she got
up--with difficulty, for she had sat there so long that she was stiff in
every joint--and going to her own desk, she hunted about in it for that
little envelope, which, for nearly twelve of the fifty golden years
which were to find them in "their field," had held the circle of braided
grass. When she opened it, and slid the ring out into the palm of her
hand it crumbled into dust. She debated putting it back into the
envelope and inclosing it in her letter? But a rush of tenderness for
Maurice made her say: "No! It might hurt him." So she dropped it down
behind the logs in the fireplace. "When the fire is lighted it will burn
up." Lily's scented handkerchief had turned to ashes there, too. Then
she folded the letter, slipped it into an envelope, sealed it, addressed
it, and put it in her desk. "He'll find it," she thought, "_afterward_."
Find it,--and know how much she loved him!--the words were like wine to
her. Then she looked at the clock and was startled to see that it was
five. She must hurry! He might come home and stop her!...
She was perfectly calm; she put on her coat and hat and opened the front
door; then saw the gleam of lights on the wet pavement and felt the
March drizzle in her face; she reflected that it would be very wet in
the meadow, and went back for her rubbers.
When the car came banging cheerfully along, she boarded it and sat so
that she would be able to see Lily's house. "She's getting his supper,"
Eleanor thought; "dear little Jacky! Well, he will be having his supper
with Maurice pretty soon! I wonder how she'll get along with Mary? Mary
will call her 'Mrs. Curtis,' Mary would leave in a minute if she knew
what kind of a person 'Mrs. Curtis' was!" She smiled at that; it pleased
her. "But she mustn't call him 'Maurice,'" she thought; "I won't permit
_that_!"
The car stopped, and all the other passengers got out. Eleanor vaguely
watched the conductor pull the trolley pole round for the return trip;
then she rose hurriedly. As she started along the road toward the meadow
she thought. "I can walk into the water; I never could jump in! But it
will be easy to wade in." That made her think of the picnic, and the
wading, and how Maurice had tied Edith's shoestrings; and with that came
a surge of triumph. "When he reads my letter, and knows how much I love
him, he'll forget her. And when she hears he has married Lily, she'll
stop making love to him by getting him to tie her shoestrings!"
It was quite dark by this time, and chilly; she had meant to sit down
for a while, with her back against the locust tree, and think how, _at
last_, he was going to realize her love! But when she reached the bank
of the river she stooped and felt the winter-bleached grass, and found
it so wet with the small, fine rain which had begun to fall, that she
was afraid to sit down. "I'd add to my cold," she thought. So she stood
there a long time, looking at the river, leaden now in the twilight.
"How it glittered that day!" she thought. Suddenly, on a soft wind of
memory, she seemed to smell the warm fragrance of the clover, and hear
again her own voice, singing in the sunshine--
"Through the clear windows of the morning!"
"I'll leave my coat on the bank," she said; "but I'll wear my hat; it
will keep my hair from getting messy. ... Oh, Maurice mustn't let her
call him 'Maurice'! I wish I'd made that clearer in my letter. Why
didn't I tell him to give her that five cents? ... I wonder how many
'minutes' we have had now? We had had fifty-four, that Day. I wish I had
calculated, and put the number in the letter. No, that might have made
him feel badly. I don't want to hurt him; I only want him to know that I
love him enough to die to make him happy. Oh--will it be cold?"
It was then that she took, slowly, one step--and stood still. And
another--and paused. Her heart began to pound suffocatingly in her
throat, and suddenly she knew that she was afraid! She had not known it;
fear had not entered into her plans; just love--and Maurice; just
hate--and Edith! Nor had "Right" or "Wrong" occurred to her. Now, old
instincts rose up. People called this "wicked"? So, if she was going to
do it, she must do it quickly! She mustn't get to thinking or she might
be afraid to do it, because it would be "wicked." She unfastened her
coat, then fumbled with her hat, pinning it on firmly; she was saying,
aloud: "Oh--oh--oh--it's wicked. But I must. Oh--my skirts will get
wet ... 'Kiss thy perfumed garments' ... No; I'll hold them up. Oh--oh--"
And as she spoke her crazy purpose drove her forward; she held back
against it--but, like the pressure of a hand upon her shoulder, it
pushed her on down the bank--slowly--slowly--her heels digging into the
crumbling clay, her hands clutching now at a tuft of grass, now at a
drooping branch; she was drawing quick breaths of terror, and talking,
in little gasps, aloud: "He'll forget Edith. He'll have Jacky. He'll
know how much I love him...." So, over the pebbles, out on to the spit
of sand; on--on--until she reached the river's edge. She stood there for
a minute, listening to the lisping chatter of the current. Very slowly,
she stepped in, and was ankle deep in shallow water,--then stopped
short--the water soaked through her shoes, and suddenly she felt it,
like circling ice, around her ankles! Aloud, she said, "Maurice,--I give
you Jacky. But don't let Lily call you--" She stepped on, into the
stream; one step--two--three. It was still shallow. "Why doesn't it get
_deep_?" she said, angrily; another step and the water was halfway to
her knees; she felt the force of the current and swayed a little; still
another step--above her knees now! and the _rip_, tugging and pulling at
her floating skirts. It was at the next step that she slipped,
staggered, fell full length--felt the water gushing into the neck of her
dress, running down her back, flowing between her breasts; felt her
sleeves drenched against her arms; she sprang up, fell again, her head
under water, her face scraping the pebbly sharpness of the river
bed,--again got on to her feet and ran choking and coughing, stumbling
and slipping, back to the sand-spit, and the shore. There she stood,
soaking wet, gasping. Her hat was gone, her hair dripping about her
face. "_I can't_," she said.
She climbed up the bank, catching at the grass and twigs, and feeling
her tears running hot over the icy wetness of her cheeks. When she
reached the top she picked up her coat with numb, shaking hands and,
shivering violently, put it on with a passionate desire for warmth.
"I tried; I _tried_," she said; "but--I can't!"