"Has Edith—?" he began.

She laughed ruefully. "No. Young people are not what they were in my day. Edith is not a bit sentimental."

Maurice was silent. When they reached the hotel, they went upstairs into a vast, bleak parlor, and steered their way among enormous plush armchairs to a sofa. A few electric bulbs, glaring among the glass prisms of a remote chandelier, made a dim light—but not too dim for Mary Houghton to see that Maurice's face was drawn and worried; involuntarily she said:

"You dear boy, I wish you didn't look so careworn!"

"I'm bothered about something," he said.

"Your uncle Henry told me to 'poke around,' and see if you were troubled about money?" she said, smiling.

"Oh, not especially. I'm always more or less strapped. But money isn't worth bothering about, really."

"If you 'consider the stars,' you will find very few things are worth bothering about! Except, of course, wrongdoing."

And, to his own astonishment, he found himself saying, "I'm afraid that's where I come in!" As he spoke, he remembered that night of the eclipse—oh, those moon-washed depths, those stupendous serenities of Law and Beauty which, together, are Truth! How passionately he had desired Truth. And now Mrs. Houghton was saying "Consider the stars." "If I could only tell her!" he thought.

"If the wrongdoing is behind you," said Mary Houghton, "let it go."

"It won't let me go," he said, with nervous lightness. "Though it's behind me, all right!"

Which made her say, gently, "Maurice, perhaps I know what troubles you?" His start made her add, quickly: "Your uncle Henry has never betrayed your confidence; but ... I guessed, long ago, that something had gone wrong. I don't know how wrong—"

"Oh, Mrs. Houghton," he said, despairingly, "awfully wrong! Awfully—awfully wrong!" He put his elbow on his knee, and rested his chin on his clenched fist; she was silent. Then he said: "You've always been an angel to me. I am glad you guessed. Because—I don't know what to do."

"About the woman?"

"No. The boy."

"Oh!" she said; "a child!"

Her dismay was like a blow. "But you said you had 'guessed'?"

"I guessed that there was a woman; but I didn't know—" She put her arm over his shoulders and kissed him. "My poor Maurice!" The tears stood in her eyes.

"I told you it was 'awful,'" he said, simply; "yes, it is my little boy; I'm worried to death about him. Lily—that's her name—is perfectly all right; she means well, and adores him, and all that; but—" Then he told her what Jacky's mother had been and what she was now; and the illustrations he gave of Lily's ignorance of ethical standards made Mary Houghton cringe. "She's ruining the little fellow," he said; "he's not mean nor a coward—I'll say that for him! But he lies whenever he feels like it, and honesty only means not getting 'pinched.' She's awfully ambitious for him; but her idea of success is what she calls 'Society,' Oh, it's such a relief to speak to you, Mrs. Houghton! I haven't a soul I can talk to."

"Maurice, can't you get him?" Her voice was shocked.

He almost laughed. "Wild horses wouldn't drag him from Lily!"

She was silent before the complexity of the situation—the furtive paternity, with its bewildered sense of responsibility, in conflict with the passion of the dam!

"I have to be so infernally secret," Maurice said. "If it wasn't for that, I could train him a little, because he's fond of me," he explained—and for a moment his face relaxed into one of his old charming smiles. "He really is an awfully fine little beggar. I swear I believe he's musical! And he's confoundedly clever. Why, he said—" Mrs. Houghton could have wept with the pitifulness of it! For Maurice went on, like any proud young father, with a story of how his little boy had said this or done that. "But he's fresh, sometimes, and he's the kind that, if he got fresh, ought to be licked. She can't make him mind; but"—here the poor, shamed pride shone again in his blue eyes—"he minds me!"

Mary Houghton was silent; she tried to consider the stars, but her dismay at a child endangered, came between her and the eternal tranquillities. "The boy must be saved," she thought, "at any cost! It isn't a question of Maurice's happiness; it's a question of his obligation."

"This thing of having a secret hanging round your neck is hell!" Maurice told her. "Every minute I think—'Suppose Eleanor should find out?'"

Mrs. Houghton put her hand on his knee. "The only way to escape from the fear of being found out, Maurice, is to be found out. Get rid of the millstone. Tell Eleanor."

"You don't know Eleanor," he said, dryly.

"Yes, I do. She loves you so much that she would forgive you. And with forgiveness would come helpfulness with the little boy. The child is the important one—not you, nor Eleanor, nor the woman. Oh, Maurice, a child is the most precious thing in the world! You must save him!"

"Don't you suppose I want to? But, good God! I'm helpless."

"If you tell Eleanor, you won't be 'helpless.'"

"You don't understand. She's jealous of—of everybody."

"Telling her will prove to her she needn't be jealous of—this person. And the chance to do something for you would mean so much to her. She will forgive you—Eleanor can always do a big thing! Remember the mountain? Maurice! Let her do another great thing for you. Let her help you save your child, by making it possible for you to be open and aboveboard, and see him all you want to—all you ought to. Oh, Maurice dear, it would have been better, of course, if you had told Eleanor at first. You wouldn't have had to carry this awful load for all these years. But tell her now! Give her the chance to be generous. Let her help you to do your duty to the little boy. Maurice, his character, and his happiness, are your job! Just as much your job as if he had been Eleanor's child, instead of the child of this woman. Perhaps more so, for that reason. Don't you see that? Tell Eleanor, so that you can save him!"

The appeal was like a bugle note. Maurice—discouraged, thwarted, hopeless—heard it, and his heart quickened. This inverted idea of recompense—of making up to Eleanor for having secretly robbed her, by telling her she had been robbed!—stirred some hope in him. He did not love his wife; he was profoundly tired of her; but suppose, now, he did throw himself upon her generosity and give her a chance to prove that love which was a daily fatigue to him? Mere Truth would, as Mrs. Houghton said, go far toward saving Jacky. He was silent for a long time. Then Mary Houghton said:

"I ought to tell you, Maurice, that Henry—who is the very best man in the world, as well as the wisest!—doesn't agree with me about this matter of confession. He doesn't understand women! He thinks you ought not to tell Eleanor."

"I know. He said so. That first night, when I told him the whole hideous business, he said so. And I thought he was right. I'm afraid I still think so."

"He was wrong. Maurice, save the child! Tell Eleanor."

"That is what Edith said."

"Edith!" Mary Houghton was stupefied.

"Oh, not about this. I only mean Edith said once, 'Don't have a secret from Eleanor.'"

"She was right," Edith's mother said, getting her breath.

Then they were silent again. A distant measure of ragtime floated up from the lobby; once, as a heavy team passed down in the street, the chandelier swayed, and little lights flickered among the faintly clicking prisms. Mrs. Houghton looked at him—and looked away. Maurice was thirty-one; his face was patient and melancholy; the old crinkling laughter rarely made gay wrinkles about his eyes, yet wrinkles were there, and his lips were cynical. Suddenly, he turned and struck his hand on hers:

"I'll do it," he said....

Late that night Henry Houghton, listening to his Mary's story of this talk, looked almost frightened. "Mary, it's an awful risk—Eleanor will never stand up to it!"

"I think she will."

"My dear, when it comes to children, you—with your stars!—get down to the elemental straighter than I do; I know that! And I admit that it is terrible for Maurice's child to be scrapped, as he will be if he is brought up by this impossible person. But as for Eleanor's helping Maurice to save him from the scrap heap, you overlook the fact that to tell a jealous woman that she has cause for jealousy is about as safe as to take a lighted match into a powder magazine. There'll be an explosion."

"Well," she said, "suppose there is?"

"Good heavens, Mary! Do you realize what that means? She'll leave him!"

"I don't believe she will," his wife said, "but if she does, he can at least see all he wants of the boy. He seems to be an unusually bright child."

Her husband nodded. "Yes; Nature isn't shocked at illegitimacy; and God doesn't penalize it."

"But you do," she said, quickly, "when you won't admit that Jacky is the crux of the whole thing! It isn't poor Maurice who ought to be considered, nor that sad, tragic old Eleanor; nor the dreadful person in Medfield. But just that little child—whom Maurice has brought into the world."

"Do you mean," her husband said, aghast, "that if Eleanor saw fit to divorce him, you think he should marry this 'Lily,' so that he could get the child?"

She did shrink at that. "Well—" she hesitated.

He saw his advantage, and followed it: "He couldn't get complete possession in any other way! Unless he were legally the father, the woman could, at any minute, carry off this—what did you say his name was?—Jacky?—to Kamchatka, if she wanted to! Or she might very well marry somebody else; that kind do. Then Maurice wouldn't have any finger in the pie! No; really to get control of the child, he'd have to marry her, which, as you yourself admit, is impossible."

"I don't admit it."

"Mary! You must be reasonable; you know it would be shocking! So why not keep things as they are? Why run the risk of an explosion, by confessing to Eleanor?"

Mary Houghton pondered, silently.

"Kit," he said, "this is a 'condition and not a theory'; the woman was—was common, you know. Maurice doesn't owe her anything; he has paid the piper ten times over! Any further payment, like ruining his career by 'making an honest woman' of her,—granting an explosion and then Eleanor's divorcing him,—would be not only wrong, but ridiculous; which is worse! Maurice is an able fellow; I rather expect to see him go in for politics one of these days. Imagine this 'Lily' at the head of his table! Or even imagine her as a fireside companion!"

"It would be terrible," she admitted—her voice trembled—"but Jacky's life is more important than Maurice's dinner table. And fireside happiness is less important than the meeting of an obligation! Henry, Maurice made a bad woman Jacky's mother; he owes her nothing. But do you mean to say that you don't think he owes the child a decent father?"

"My darling," Henry Houghton said, tenderly, "you are really a little crazy. You are like your stars, you so 'steadfastly pursue your shining,' that you fail to see that, in this dark world of men, there has to be compromise. If this impossible situation should arise—which God forbid!—if the explosion should come, and Eleanor should leave him, of course Maurice wouldn't marry the woman! I should consider him a candidate for an insane asylum if he thought of such a thing. He would simply do what he could for the boy, and that would be the end of it."

"Oh," she said, "don't you see? It would be the beginning of it!—The beginning of an evil influence in the world; a bad little boy, growing into a bad man—and his own father permitting it! But," she ended, with a sudden uplifted look, "the 'situation,' as you call it, won't arise; Eleanor will prevent it! Eleanor will save Jacky."



CHAPTER XXVII

Walking home that night, with Mrs. Houghton's "tell Eleanor" ringing in his ears, Maurice imagined a "confession," and he, too, used Mr. Houghton's words, "'there will be an explosion!' But I'll gamble on it; I'll tell her. I promised Mrs. Houghton I would," Then, very anxiously, he tried to decide how he should do it; "I must choose just the right moment," he thought.

When, three months later, the moment came, he hardly recognized it. He had been playing squash and had given his knee a nasty wrench; the ensuing synovitis meant an irritable fortnight of sitting at home near the telephone, with his leg up, fussing about office work. And when he was not fussing he would look at Eleanor and say to himself, "How can I tell her?" Then he would think of his boy developing into a little joyous liar—and thief! The five cents that purchased the jew's-harp, instead of going into the missionary box, was intensely annoying to him. "But the lying is the worst. I can stand anything but lying!" the poor lying father thought. It was then that Eleanor caught his eye, a half-scared, appraising, entreating eye—and stood still, looking down at him.

"Maurice, you want something? What is it?"

"Oh, Nelly!" he said; "I want—" And the thing tumbled from his lips in six words: "I want you to forgive me."

Eleanor put her hand to her throat; then she said, "I know, Maurice."

Silence tingled between them. Maurice said, "You know?"

She nodded. He was too stunned to ask how she knew; he only said, "I've been a hound."

Instantly, as though some locked and bolted door had been forced, her heart was open to him. "Maurice! I can bear it—if only you don't lie to me!"

"I have lied," he said; "but I can't go on lying any more! It's been hell. Of course you'll never forgive me."

Instantly she was on her knees beside him, and her lips trembled against his cheek; but she was silent. She was agonizing, not for herself, but for him; he had suffered. And when that thought came, Love rose like a wave and swept jealousy away! It was impossible for her to speak. Over in his basket old Bingo growled.

"It was years ago," he said, very low; "I haven't—had anything to do with her since; but—"

She said, gasping, "Do you ... love her still?"

"Good God! no; I never loved her."

"Then," she said, "I don't mind."

His arms went about her, his head dropped on her shoulder. The little dog, unnoticed, barked angrily. For a few minutes neither of them could speak. To him, the unexpectedness of forgiveness was an absolute shock. Eleanor, her cheek against his hair, wept. Happy tears! Then she whispered:

"There is ... a child?"

He nodded speechlessly.

"Maurice, I will love it—"

He was too overcome to speak. Here she was, this irritating, foolish, faithful woman, coming, with outstretched, forgiving arms—to rescue him from his long deceit!

"I have known it," she said, "for nearly two years."

"And you never spoke of it!"

"I couldn't."

"I want to tell you everything, Eleanor. It was—that Dale woman."

She pressed very close to him: "I know."

He wondered swiftly how she knew, but he did not stop to ask; his words rushed out; it was as if the jab of a lancet had opened a hidden wound: "I never cared a copper for her. Never! But—it happened. I was angry about something, and,—Oh, I'm not excusing myself. There isn't any excuse! But I met her, and somehow—Oh, Eleanor!"

"Maurice, ... what does she call you?"

"Call me? What do you mean?"

"What name?"

"Why, 'Mr. Curtis,' of course."

"Not 'Maurice'? Oh—I'm so glad! Go on."

"Well, I never saw her again until she wrote to me about ... this child. Eleanor! I tried to tell you. Do you remember? One night in the boarding house—the night of the eclipse? I thought you'd never forgive me, but I tried to tell you ... Oh, Star, you are wonderful!"

It was an amazing moment; he said to himself: "Mrs. Houghton was right. Edith was right. How I have misjudged her!" He went on, Eleanor still kneeling beside him, sometimes holding his hand to her lips, sometimes pressing her wet cheek against his; once her graying hair fell softly across his eyes ... "Then," he said, "then ... the baby was born."

"Oh, we had no children!"

His arms comforted her. "I didn't care. I have never cared. I hated the idea of children, because of ... this child."

"Is his name Jacky?"

"That's what she called him. I never really noticed him, until winter before last; then I kind of—" He paused, then rushed on; it was to be Truth henceforward between them! "I sort of—got fond of him." He waited, holding his breath; but there was no "explosion"! She just pressed his hand against her breast.

"Yes, Maurice?"

"He was sick and she sent for me—"

"I know. That's how I knew. The telegram came, and I—Oh," she interrupted herself, "I wasn't prying!" She was like a dog, shrinking before an expected blow.

The fright in her face went to his heart; what a brute he must have been to have made her so afraid of him!

"It was all right to open it! I'm glad you opened it. Well, he was pretty sick, and I had to get him into the hospital; and after that I began to get sort of—interested in him. But now I'm worried to death, because—" Then he told why he was worried; he told her almost with passion!... "For he's an awfully fine little chap! But she's ruining him." It was amazing how he was able to pour himself out to her! His anxiety about Jacky, his irritation at Lily—yet his appreciation of Lily; he wouldn't go back on Lily! "She wasn't bad—ever. Just unmoral."

"I understand."

"Oh, Eleanor, to be able to talk to you, and tell you!" So he went on telling her: he told her of his faint, shy pride in his little son; told her a funny speech, and she laughed. Told her Jacky had seen a rainbow in the gutter and said it was "handsome." "He really notices Beauty!" Told her of Lily's indignation at the Sunday-school teacher, and his own effort to make Jacky tell the truth, "I have a tremendous influence over him. He'll do anything for me; only, I see him so seldom that I can't counteract poor old Lily's influence. She hasn't any idea of our way of looking at things."

"You must counteract her! You must see him all the time."

"Eleanor," he said, "I have never known you!"

He tried to lift her and hold her in his arms, but she was terrified about his knee.

"No! Don't move! You'll hurt your knee. Maurice, can't I see him?"

"What! Do you really want to?" he said, amazed "Eleanor, you are wonderful!"

That whole evening was entire bliss—as much to Maurice as to Eleanor; to him, it was escape from the bog of secrecy in which, soiled with self-disgust, he had walked for nearly nine years; and with the clean sense of touching the bedrock of Truth was an upspringing hope for his little boy, who "noticed Beauty"! He would be able to see Jacky, and train him, and gain his affection, and make a man of him. He had a sudden vision of companionship. "He'll be in business with me." But that made him smile at himself. "Well, we'll go to ball games, anyway!"

To Eleanor, the evening was a mountain peak; from the sun-smitten heights of a forgiveness that knew itself to be Love, and forgot that it forgave, she looked out, and saw—not that grave where Truth and Pride were buried, but a new heaven and a new earth; Maurice's complete devotion. And his child,—whom she could love.



CHAPTER XXVIII

Those next weeks were full of plans and hopes on Eleanor's part, and gratitude on Maurice's part. But she would not let him say that he was grateful, or that she was generous; he had told her, of course, how Mrs. Houghton had guessed long ago what had happened, and how she had urged him to trust his wife's nobility—but Eleanor would not let him call her "noble"; "Don't say it! And don't be 'grateful,' I just love you," she said; "and if you only knew what it means to me to be able to do anything for you! It's so long since you've needed me, Maurice."

The pathos of her sense of uselessness made his eyes sting. "I couldn't get along without you," he told her.

Once, on a rainy April Sunday morning, when they were talking about Jacky (Maurice had gone to see him the day before, and was gnashing his teeth over some cheerful obliquity on the part of Lily)—Maurice said, emphatically: "Gosh! Nelly, I don't know what I'd do without you!"

She, sitting on a stool at his side (and looking, poor woman! old enough to be his mother), was radiant.

"And you don't enjoy talking to Lily?" she said—just for the happiness of hearing, again, his horrified protest, "I should say not! There's nothing she can talk about."

"She doesn't know about books and things? She hasn't—brains?"

"Brains? She probably never read anything in her life! She has lots of sense, but no intellect. She hasn't an idea beyond food and flowers—and Jacky."

"I wish I had her idea about food," Eleanor said, simply.

It was her fairness toward Lily that amazed him; it made him reproach himself for his stupidity in not having confessed to her long ago! "Why was I such a fool, Eleanor, as not to know that you were a big woman? Mrs. Houghton knew it. Why, even Edith knew it! She told me you'd forgive anything."

"What!" She rose abruptly and stood looking at him with suddenly angry eyes. "Does Edith know?" she said.

"No! Of course she doesn't know—this! But one day she and I were taking a walk, and I was thinking what a devilish mess I was in.... And I suppose Edith saw I was down by the head, and she got to talking about you—"

"You let her talk about me!"

"She was saying how perfectly fine you had been about the mountain—"

"I don't need Edith Houghton's approval of my conduct, Maurice." She was trembling, and her face was quite pale. He rushed in deeper than ever:

"I was only saying I felt so—badly, because I had failed to make you happy. Of course I didn't say how! And she said, 'Don't have any secrets from Eleanor!'"

"So it was Edith who made you—"

For a moment Maurice was too dismayed to speak; besides, he didn't know what to say. What he did say was that she misunderstood him. "Good heavens! Eleanor, you didn't think I'd tell Edith a thing like that? Or that I'd tell any woman, when I didn't tell you? But Edith knew you better than I did; she said no matter what I'd done (I just happened to say I was a skunk), you loved me enough to forgive me. And you have forgiven me."

"Yes," she said, in a whisper; "I've forgiven you."

She went over to the window, and stood perfectly silent. It was raining steadily; the river, a block away, was hidden in the yellow fog; down in the yard, the tables and chairs under the poplar dripped and dripped. As for Maurice, it was as if some dark finger had stretched out and touched a bubble.... She was the same Eleanor.

But he did not dwell upon this revealing moment; it was enough that at last he could stop lying, and that Eleanor would help him about Jacky! He called her back from the window and made her sit down again beside him, pretending not to see how her hands were trembling. Then he went on talking about Jacky.

"His latest achievement is an infernal mouth harmonicon."

She said, listlessly, "I wish I could give him music lessons."

"He's crazy about music; trails hand organs all over Medfield!" Maurice said, with a great effort to be cheerfully casual; "but, Heaven knows, I'd be glad if you could give him lessons in anything! Manners, for instance. He hasn't any. Or grammar; I told him not to say 'ain't,' and, if you please! he told his mother she mustn't say it! Lily got on her ear."

She smiled faintly. "I wish I could see him," she said.

She had urged this more than once, but it had not seemed practicable. "I can't bring him here," Maurice explained; "he'd blurt out to Lily where he'd been, and she'd get uneasy. Even as it is, I live in dread that she'll pack up and clear out with him."

"She shan't take him away!" Eleanor said; she was eager again;—after all, Edith, for all her impertinence in advising Maurice how to treat his wife!—Edith could not break in upon an intimacy like this!

Her incessant talk about Jacky (which might have bored Maurice just a little, if it had not touched him) gave her, in some subtle, spiritual way, a sense of approaching motherhood: she made preparations! She planned little gifts for him;—Maurice had told her of Jacky's lively interest in benefits to come; once, she thought, "I suppose he's too old to have one of those funny papers in his room? I saw such a pretty one to-day, little rabbits in trousers!"—For by this time she had determined that, somehow, she would get possession of him! In these maternal moments she feared no rivalry from Edith Houghton. Jacky would save her from Edith!

"Oh, Maurice! I must see him," she said once.

"I'll fix it so you can," he told her. But it was two months before he was able to fix it; then "Forepaws" came to town, and the way was clear! He would take Jacky, and Eleanor should go and have a seat near by, and come up and speak to the youngster, as any admiring stranger might, and, indeed, often did, for Jacky was a striking child—his eyes blue and keen, his skin very clear, and his cheeks glowing with health. "If he goes home and tells Lily a lady spoke to him," Maurice said, "she won't think anything of it."

"May I give him some candy?"

"No; he has too much of it as it is; get one of those tin horns for him. He'll raise Cain for Lily, I suppose; but we won't have to listen to him!" (That "we" so fed Eleanor's starved soul, that she thought of Edith Houghton with a sort of gay contempt: "I'm not afraid of her!")

The plan for seeing Jacky went through easily enough. "I'll take that boy of yours to the circus," Maurice told Lily, carelessly, one day.

"Why, that's awful kind in you, Mr. Curtis; but ain't you afraid somebody'll see you luggin' a child around?"

"Lots of men take kids to the circus—just as an excuse to go themselves."

So Maurice and the eight-year-old Jacky, in a new sailor suit, and a face so clean that it shone, walked in among the gilded cages, felt the sawdust under their feet, smelled the wild animals, heard the yelps of the jackals, the booming roar of lions, and the screeching chatter of the monkeys. And as Jacky dragged his father from cage to cage, a yard or two behind them came Eleanor.... Now and then, over Jacky's head, she caught Maurice's eye; and they both smiled.

When a speechless Jacky was taken into the central tent to sit on a narrow bench, and drink pink lemonade and eat peanuts, Eleanor was quite near him. He was unconscious of her presence—unconscious of everything! except the blare of the band, the elephants, the performing dogs—especially the poor, strained performing dogs! He never spoke once; his eyes were fixed on the rings; he didn't see his father watching him, amused and proud; still less did he see the lady who had been at his heels in the animal tent, and who now kept her mournful dark eyes on his face. When the last horse gave the last kick and trotted out through the exit, with its mysterious canvas walls, Jacky was in a daze of bliss. He sat, open-mouthed, staring at the empty, trampled sawdust.

"Come along, young man!" Maurice said; "do you want to stay here all night?"

"I'm going to be a circus rider," said Jacky, solemnly.

It was then that the "lady" spoke to him—her voice broke twice: "Well, little boy, did you like the circus?" the lady said. She was so pale that Maurice put his hand on her arm.

"Better sit down, Nelly," he said, kindly, under his breath.

She shook her head. "No ... Jacky, don't you want to tell me your name?"

"But you know my name," said Jacky, with a bored look.

Maurice gave her a warning glance, and she tried to cover her blunder: "I heard your father—I mean this gentleman—call you 'Jacky,'" she explained—panting, for Maurice's quick frown frightened her. "Here's a present for you," she said.

"Present!" said Jacky—and made a joyous grab at the horn, which he immediately put to his lips; but before it could emit its ear-piercing screech, Maurice struck it down.

"Where are your manners? Say 'Thank you' to the lady."

Jacky sighed, but murmured, "'Ank you."

Eleanor, her chin trembling, said: "May I kiss him?"

"'Course," Maurice said, huskily.

She bent down and kissed him with trembling lips—"Ach!—you make me all wet," Jacky said, frowning at her tears on his rosy cheek.

Later, as Maurice pulled his reluctant son out on to the pavement, he was so moved that he almost forgot that she was still the old Eleanor; he didn't even listen to his little boy's passionate assertion that he would be a flying-trapeze man. As he walked along beside his wife to put her on the car he spoke with great tenderness:

"I'll leave him at Lily's, and then I'll come right home, dear, and we'll talk things over."

When he and his son got back to Maple Street, Jacky was blowing that infernal horn so that the whole neighborhood was aware of his ecstasy. Lily, waiting for them at the gate, put her hands over her ears.

"My soul and body! For the land's sake, stop! Who give you that horrid thing?"

"An old lady," said Jacky—and blew a shattering screech on Eleanor's horn.



CHAPTER XXIX

From the day of the circus, Jacky became, to Eleanor, not a symbol of Maurice's unfaithfulness, but a hope for the future. The thought of his mother was only the scar of a wound, which Maurice, in some single slashing moment, had made in her heart. She was crippled by it, of course. But the wound had healed so she could forget the scar—because Maurice had never loved Lily, never found her "interesting," never wanted to wander about with her, in a dark garden, and talk

Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax— And cabbages—and kings ...

To be sure the scar ached dully once in a while; but Eleanor knew that if she could get possession of Jacky she would be protected against other wounds—wounds which would never heal! She said to herself that Maurice would never think of Edith Houghton if he had Jacky! But how should she get Jacky?

For months she revolved countless schemes to persuade Lily to resign him; schemes so futile that Maurice, listening to them every night when he got home from the office, was touched, of course; but by and by he was also a little uneasy. He had told her where Lily lived, then regretted it, for once she walked up and down before the house on Maple Street for an hour, hoping to see "the woman," but failing, because Lily and Jacky happened to be in town that afternoon.

"I have a great mind to steal him for you!" she said, telling Maurice of her fruitless effort.

He protested, too disturbed at her mere presence on Lily's street to notice her attempt at a joke. "If Lily should imagine that we were interested in Jacky, she'd run!" he explained; "it's dangerous, Nelly, really. You mustn't go near her!"

She promised she wouldn't; but every day of that Mercer winter of low-hanging smoke and damp chilliness, she longed to get possession of the child—first to make Maurice happy; then with the craving, driving, elemental desire for maternity; and then for self-protection,—Jacky would vanquish Edith!

So she brooded: a child!

"If I could only get him, it wouldn't be 'just us'!" ... "A boy's clothes are not as pretty as a girl's, but a little rough suit would be awfully attractive.... I'd give him music lessons.... We could go out to our field in June. And he would take off his shoes and stockings and wade!" How foolish Edith's grown-up childishness of wading looked, compared to the scene which she visualized—a little, handsome boy, standing in the shallow rippling water, bareheaded, probably; the sunshine sifting down through the locust blossoms and touching that thatch of yellow hair, and glinting into those blue eyes. "He would call me 'Mamma'!" Then she hummed to herself, "'O Spring!' Oh, I must have him!" Her hope became such an obsession that its irrationality did not strike her. It was so in her mind that she even spoke of it once to Mrs. Houghton. "I know you know?" she said; "Maurice told me he told you."

Mary Houghton said, hesitatingly, "I think I know what you mean."

This was in March. Mrs. Houghton and Edith were in town for a few days' shopping, and of course they meant to see Eleanor. "I'll go to the dressmaker's," Edith had told her mother, "and then I'll corral Maurice, and we'll drop in on Mrs. Newbolt, and then I'll meet you at Eleanor's. I don't hanker for a long call on Eleanor." Edith's gayly candid face hardened.

So it was that Mrs. Houghton had arrived ahead of her girl, and the two older women were alone before a little smoldering fire in the library. Eleanor had left her tea tray to go across the room and give little helpless Bingo a lump of sugar. "He only eats what I give him," she said; "dear old Bingo! I think he actually suffers, he's so jealous." Then, pouring Mrs. Houghton's tea, she suddenly spoke: "I know you—know?" When Mary Houghton said, gravely, yes, she "knew," Eleanor said, "Oh, Mrs. Houghton, Maurice and I are nearer to each other than we ever were before!"

"That's as it should be. And as I knew it would be, too. You've done a noble thing, Eleanor."

"No! No! Don't say that! It was nothing. Because I—love him so. And he never cared for that woman. She has no brains, he says. But what I want is to get the boy for him. Oh, he must have the boy!" Then she told Mrs. Houghton how Maurice went to see the child. "He goes once a week, though he says she's jealous if he makes too many suggestions; so he has to be very careful or she would get angry. But he has managed it so I have seen him; last summer he took him to the circus, and I sat near them. And twice he's had him in the park and I spoke to him. And on Christmas he took him to the movies; I sat beside him. And I buttoned his coat when he went out!" Her eyes were rapt.

Mary Houghton, listening, said to herself, "Now what will Henry Houghton say about the 'explosion'? I shall rub it into him when I get home!" ... "Eleanor, you are magnificent!" she said.

"But how could I do anything else—if I loved Maurice?" Eleanor said. "Oh, I do want him to have Jacky! We must make a man of him. It would be wicked to let Lily ruin him! And I want to give him music lessons. He has Maurice's blue eyes."

It was infinitely pathetic, this woman with gray hair, telling of her young husband's joy in his little son—who was not hers. And Eleanor's sense of the paramount importance of the child gave Mrs. Houghton a new and real respect for her. Aloud, she agreed heartily with the statement that Jacky must be saved from Lily.

"She isn't bad," Eleanor explained; "but she's just like an animal, Maurice says. Devoted to Jacky, but no more idea of right and wrong than—than Bingo!" She was so happy that she laughed, and looked almost young—but at that moment the street door opened, closed, and in the hall some one else laughed. Instantly Eleanor looked old. "It's Edith," she said, coldly.

It was—with Maurice in tow. "I haled him forth from his office," Edith said; "and we went to see your aunt, Eleanor. She's a lamb!"

"Tea?" Eleanor said, briefly.

"Yes, indeed!" Edith said. She looked very pretty—cheeks glowing and brown hair flying about the rounded brim of a brown fur toque.

Maurice, keeping an eye on her, was gently kind to his wife. "Head better, Nelly?" Then, having secured his tea, he drew Edith over to the window and they went on with some discussion which had paused as they entered the house.

Eleanor, watching them, and making another cup of tea for Mrs. Houghton, spilled the boiling water on the tray and on her own hand.

"My dear!" said Mrs. Houghton, "you have scalded yourself!"

And, indeed, Eleanor whitened with the pain of her smarting, puffing fingers. But she said, her eyes fixed on Edith, "What are they talking about?" Mrs. Houghton's look of surprise made her add: "Edith seems so interested. I just wondered...." She had caught a phrase or two:

"I can take the spring course,—it's three months. I think our University Domestic Science Department is just every bit as good as any of the Eastern ones."

"Where did you two meet each other?" Eleanor called, sharply.

"Why, I told you," Edith said, coming over to the tea table; "I dragged him from his desk!"

"Come, Edith, we must go," Mrs. Houghton said, rising.

"Why don't you stay to dinner?" Maurice urged—but Eleanor was silent. "If you are in town next week, Skeezics, you've got to put up here. Understand? Tell her so, Eleanor!"

Eleanor said nothing. Mrs. Houghton said she was afraid it wouldn't be convenient.

Eleanor said nothing.

"Of course you will come here!" Maurice said; he was sharply angry at his wife.

In the momentary and embarrassing pause, the color flew into Edith's face, but she was elaborately indifferent. "Good-by, Eleanor; good-by, Maurice!"

"I'm going to escort you to the hotel," Maurice said; and, over his shoulder to Eleanor: "I've got to rush off to St. Louis to-night, Eleanor. That Greenleaf business. Has Mrs. O'Brien brought my things home?"'

"I'll see," she said, mechanically....

Nobody had much to say on that walk to the hotel; but when Maurice had left them, and the two ladies were in their room, Edith faced her mother:

"What is the matter?"

"You mean with Eleanor? She has a headache, I suppose."

"Mother, don't squirm! You know just as well as I do that she doesn't want me to stay with them. Why not?" She did not wait for an answer, which, indeed, her mother could not immediately find. "Well, Heaven knows I'm not pining to be with her! I shall run in to-morrow morning, and tell her that Mrs. Newbolt asked me to stay with her.... Mother, how could Maurice have fallen in love with Eleanor?" Her voice trembled; she went over to the window and stood looking down into the street; her hands were clenched behind her, and her soft young chin was rigid. "He was just a boy," she said; her eyes were blurring so that the street was a gray fog; "how could Eleanor?" It seemed as if her own ardent, innocent body felt the recoil of Maurice's youth from Eleanor's age! She thought of that dark place in his past, which she had accepted with pain, but always with defending excuses; she excused him again, now, in her thoughts: "Eleanor was impossible! That's why somebody else ... caught him. And it was long ago. And Eleanor's old enough to be his mother. He never could have loved her!" Suddenly she had a fleeting, but real, pity for Eleanor: "Poor thing!" Aloud she said, huskily, over her shoulder, "If she had really loved him, she wouldn't have done such a terrible thing as marry him."

Mrs. Houghton, reading the evening paper, said, briefly, "She loves him now, my dear."

"Oh!" Edith said, passionately, "sometimes I am sorry for Eleanor—and then the next minute I perfectly hate her!"

"She was only forty when she married him," Mary Houghton said; "that isn't old at all! And I have always been sorry for her." She looked up over her spectacles at the tense young figure by the window, outlined against the yellow sunset; saw those clenched hands, heard the impetuous voice break on a word,—and forgot Eleanor in a more intimate anxiety: "Of course," she said, "such a difference in age as there is between Maurice and Eleanor is a pity. But Maurice is devoted to her, and with reason. She has been generous when he has been unkind. I happen to know that."

"Maurice couldn't be unkind!"

Her mother ignored this. "And remember another thing, Edith: It isn't years that decide whether a marriage is a failure. One of the happiest marriages I ever knew was between a woman of fifty and a man of thirty. You see—" she paused, and took off her spectacles, and tapped the arm of her chair, thoughtfully: "You see, Edith, you don't understand. You are so appallingly young! You think Love speaks only through the senses. My dear, Love's highest speech is in the Spirit; the language of the senses is only it's pretty, stammering, divine baby-talk!" Edith was silent. Her mother went on: "Yes, it isn't age that decides things. It's selfishness or unselfishness. At present Eleanor is extraordinarily unselfish, so I believe they may yet be very happy."

"Oh, I hope so, of course," Edith said—and put up a furtive finger to wipe first one cheek, and then the other.... "Poor Maurice!" she said.



CHAPTER XXX

When Maurice got back to the firelit library, he said, filling his pipe with rather elaborate attention, and trying to speak with good-natured carelessness, "I'm afraid Edith thought you didn't want her, Nelly." He was sorry the next moment that he had said even as much as that: Eleanor was breathing quickly, and her dark, sad eyes were hard with anger.

"I don't," she said

Maurice said, sharply, "You have never liked her!"

"Why should I like her? She talks to you incessantly. And now, she looks at you; here—before me! Looks at you."

"Eleanor, what on earth—"

"Oh, I saw her, when you were talking over there by the window; I watched her. She looked at you! I am not blind. I understand what it means when a girl looks at a man that way. And now she's planning to be in Mercer for three months? Well, that's simply to be near you. She'd like to live in the same house with you, I suppose! If it wasn't for me, she'd be in love with you—perhaps she is, anyhow? Yes, I think she is." There was a sick silence. "And, perhaps," she said, with a gasp, "you are in love with her?"

He was dumb. The suddenness of the attack completely routed him—its suddenness; but more than its suddenness was a leaping question in his own mind. When she said, "You are in love with her?" an appalled "Am I?" was on his lips. Instantly he knew, what he had not known, at any rate articulately, that he was in love with Edith. His thoughts broke in galloping confusion; his hand, holding the hot bowl of his pipe, trembled. He tried to speak, stammered, said, with a sort of gasp, "Don't—don't say a thing like that!" Then he got his breath, and ended, with a composure that kept his words slow and his voice cold, "It is terrible to say a thing like that to me."

She flung out her hands. "What more can I do for you than I have done? Oh, Maurice—Maurice, no woman could love you more than I do?... Could they?"

"I am grateful; I—" He tried to speak gently, but his voice had begun to shake with angry terror; it was abominable, this thing she had said! (But ... it was true.) "No; no woman could have done more for me than you have, Eleanor; I am grateful."

"Grateful? Yes. You give me gratitude." Maurice was speechless. "I thought, perhaps, you loved me," she said. A minute later he heard her going upstairs to her own room.

He stood staring after her, open-mouthed. Then he said, under his breath, "Good God!" After a while he went over to the fireplace, and, standing with one hand on the mantelpiece, he kicked the charred logs on the hearth together. "This room is cold. I must build the fire up.... Yes, it's true.... The wood is too green to burn. I'll order from another man next time.... I suppose I've been in love with her for a good while. I wonder if it began that night Jacky was sick ... and she kissed me? No; it must have been before that." He stooped and mended the fire, piling the logs together with slow exactness: "What life might have been!" He took up the bellows and urged a little flame to rise and flicker and lap the wood, then burst to crackling blaze. After a while he said, "Poor Nelly!" But he had himself in hand by that time, and, though this terrifying knowledge was surging in him, he knew that his voice would not betray him. He went upstairs to comfort her with kindly assurances that she was wrong. ("More lies," he thought, wearily.)

But apparently she didn't need comforting! She was smoothing her hair before the glass, and seemed perfectly calm. He had expected tears, and violent reproaches, which he was prepared to meet with either good-natured ridicule or quiet falsehood, as the occasion might demand. But nothing was demanded. She continued to brush her hair; so he found it quite easy to come up behind her and lay a hand on her shoulder, and say, "Nelly, dear, that wasn't a nice thing to say!"

She did not meet his eyes in the mirror; she only said (she was trembling), "I suppose it wasn't."

Maurice was puzzled, but he said, casually, that he was sorry to have to rush off that night. "I've got to take the Limited for St. Louis. Mr. Weston wants some papers put through. I hate to leave you."

She made no answer.

"I shall be gone a week, maybe more; because if I don't pull the chestnut out of the fire in St. Louis, I'll have to go to some other places."

She hardly heard him; she was saying to herself: "I oughtn't to have told him she was in love with him; it may make him think so, himself!"

"Guess I'll pack my grip now," he said.

"Maurice," she said, breathlessly, "I didn't mean—" She was so frightened that she couldn't finish her sentence; but he said, with kindly understanding:

"Of course you didn't!"

It flashed into her mind that if she left him alone, he would know that what she had said was so meaningless that she didn't think it worth talking about. "I—I'm going to Auntie's to dinner," she told him, on the spur of the moment. "Do you mind?"

"No; of course not. Wait a second, and I'll walk round with you."

She said, unsteadily, "Oh no; you've got your packing to do—" Then she kissed him swiftly, and hurried downstairs.

"But Eleanor, wait!" he called; "I'll go with—"

She had gone. He heard the front door close. He stood still in his perplexity. What was the matter? She had got over that jealousy of Edith in an instant; got over it, and accepted his departure without all those wearying protestations of love and loneliness to which he was accustomed. "Is she angry," he told himself; "or just ashamed of having been so foolish?" Mechanically, he picked out some neckties from his drawer, and paused.... "But she wasn't foolish. I do love Edith.... How did she get on to it? She is so good to me about Jacky—and I love Edith!" He went on packing his grip. "I wonder if any man ever paid as I am paying?—I'll call her up at Mrs. Newbolt's, before I go, and say good-by."

No doubt he would have done so, but when he went downstairs he found Johnny Bennett, smoking comfortably before that very cheerful little fire.

"I dropped in," said Johnny, "to ask for some dinner."

"If you'll take pot luck," said Maurice; "Eleanor isn't at home, and I don't know what the lady below stairs will work off on us." (It would be a relief, he thought, to have somebody at table, so that he would not be alone with his own confusion.)

"I came," Johnny said, "to tell you I'm off."

"Off? When? Where to? I thought your electric performances were panning out so well—"

"Oh, they're panning out all right," John said; "but they'll pan out better in South America. I'm going the first of the month."

"South America! What's the matter with Pennsylvania?"

"Well," Johnny said; "I thought I'd light out—"

Then they began to talk climate, and consulates, which carried them through dinner, and went on in the library, and Maurice's surface interest in Johnny's affairs, at least kept him from thinking of his own dismay.

"But I supposed," he said, and paused, "I sort of thought you—had reasons for staying round here?"

"There's no use hanging round," John said; "it's better to pull out altogether. It's easier that way," he said, simply. "So I'm off for a year. They wanted me to sign for three years, but I said, 'one.' Things may look better for me when I get home."

Maurice, standing with his back to the fire, his hands in his pocket, looked down at the steady youngster—looked at the mild eyes behind those large spectacles, looked at the clean, strong lines of the jaw and forehead. A good fellow. A very good fellow. He wondered why Edith wouldn't take him? ("It couldn't make any difference to me," he thought; "and I want her to be happy.")

"Johnny," he said, "you can say, 'Mind your business,' before I begin, if you want to. But I don't think anybody's cutting you out? Better 'try, try again.'"

Johnny took his pipe from his mouth, bent forward to shake the ashes out of it, and stared into the fire. Then he said, clearing his throat once or twice: "I've bothered her, 'trying,' I thought I'd start on a new tack."

"You'll get her yet!" Maurice encouraged him. He wondered, as he spoke, how he could speak so lightly, urging old Johnny to go ahead and make another stab at it, and, maybe, "get her"! He wondered if he was looking at things the way the dead look at the living? He was not, he thought, suffering, as he had suffered in those first moments when Eleanor had flung the truth at him. "You'll get her yet," he said, vaguely.

Johnny took out his tobacco pouch, and began to fill his pipe, poking his thumb down into the bowl with slow precision, then holding it on a level with his eyes and squinting at it, to make sure it was smooth; he seemed profoundly engrossed by that pipe—but he put it in his mouth without lighting it.

"Well, I don't know," he said; "I haven't an awful lot of hope that I'll ever get her. But I thought I'd try this way. Maybe, if she doesn't see me for a year...."

"There's nobody ahead of you, anyway," Maurice said, absently.

"Well, I don't know," John Bennett said again.

His voice was so harsh that Maurice's preoccupation sharpened into uneasy attention. Johnny's hopes and fears had not really touched him. His encouraging platitudes were only a way of smothering his own thoughts. But that, "Well, I don't know—" woke a keenly attentive fear: was there anybody else? ("Not that that could make any difference to me.")

"You 'don't know'?" he said; "how do you mean? You think there is somebody?"

Johnny Bennett was silent; he had an impulse to say "you are several kinds of a fool, old man." But he was silent.

"Why, Great Scott!" Maurice protested. "Buried up there in the mountains, she hardly knows a fellow—except you!—and me," he added, with a laugh.

"I think," said John, huskily, "she has ... some kind of an ideal up her sleeve. And I don't fill the bill. Imagination, you know. A—a sort of Sir Walter Raleigh business. Remember how she was always sort of dotty on Sir Walter Raleigh? An ideal, don't you know"; Johnny rambled on: "Girls are that way. Only Edith's the kind that sticks to things."

"'Try, try again,'" said Maurice, mechanically; but his blood suddenly pounded in his ears.

"I'm going to," Johnny said, calmly; and began to talk South America. Indeed, he talked so long that Maurice, catching sight of the clock, exclaimed that he would have to run!

"Johnny, get Eleanor on the wire, will you; at Mrs. Newbolt's, and tell her I'd have called her up, but I got delayed, and had to leg it to catch the train? Or maybe you wouldn't mind going round there, and walking home with her?"

"Glad to," said Johnny.

When Maurice, swinging on to the last platform of the last Pullman, was able to sit down in his section, he was absorbed in Johnny Bennett's affairs. "What did he mean by saying that? Did he mean—" Johnny's enigmatical words rang in his ears; "I said to 'try again; nobody was cutting him out.' And he said 'She has some kind of an ideal up her sleeve.' ... 'A Sir Walter Raleigh business' ..."

Johnny Bennett, walking toward Mrs. Newbolt's, was also thinking, in his calm way, of just what he had said there by Maurice's fireside. "Of course he doesn't see why she hasn't fallen in love with anybody else. Any decent fellow would be stupid about that sort of thing. But it's been that way ever since she was a child. And I've loved her ever since then, too. All the same, I'll only sign up for a year. Then I'll make another stab at it ..."

When he rang Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell, and was told that Eleanor had not been there, he was perplexed. "I must have misunderstood Maurice," he thought.



CHAPTER XXXI

Eleanor had no intention of going to Mrs. Newbolt's. "She'd talk Edith to me!" she said to herself; "I can't understand why she likes her!" Instead of dining with her aunt, she meant to walk about the streets until she was sure that Maurice had started for the train; then she would go back to her own house. So she wandered down the avenue until, tired of looking with unseeing eyes into shop windows, it occurred to her to go into the park; there, on a bench on one of the unfrequented paths, she sat down, hoping that no one would recognize her; it was cold, and she shivered and looked at her watch. Only six o'clock! It would be two hours before Maurice would leave the house for the station. It seemed absurd to be here in the dampness of the March evening; but she couldn't go home and get into any discussion with him; she might burst out again about Edith!—which always made him angry. She wished that she had not told him that Edith was in love with him. "It ought to disgust him, but it might flatter him!" And she oughtn't to have said that other thing; she oughtn't to have accused him of caring for Edith. "Of course he doesn't. And it was a horrid thing to say. I was angry, because I was jealous; but it wasn't true. I wish I hadn't said it. I'll write to him, and ask him to forgive me." But the other thing was true: "I saw it in her eyes! She loves him. But I oughtn't to have put the idea into his head!"

The more she thought of what she had put into Maurice's head, the more uneasy she became. Oh, if she only had Jacky! Then, Edith could be as brazen as she pleased, and Maurice would never notice her! "Of course he doesn't love her; I'm certain of that!" she said again and again,—and all her schemes, wise and foolish, for getting possession of the boy, began to crowd into her mind.

Then an idea came to her which fairly took her breath away! A perfectly wild idea, which she dared not stop to analyze: suppose, instead of sitting here in the cold, she should go, now, boldly, to Lily, and ask for Jacky? "I believe I could persuade her to give him to us! She wouldn't do it for Maurice, but she might for me!"

She got on her feet with a spring! Her spiritual energy was like her physical energy that night on the mountain. Again she was lifting—lifting! This time it was the weight of a Love which might die! She was dragging it, carrying it! her very soul straining under her purpose of keeping it alive by the touch of a child's hand! ... Why not go and see Lily now? "She'll have finished her supper by the time I get to her house; it's at the very end of Maple Street!" If Lily consented, Eleanor might even get back to her own house in time to see Maurice, and tell him what she had accomplished before he started for his train! But she would have to hurry....

She actually ran out of the park toward the street; then stood for an endless five minutes, waiting for the Medfield car. "Perhaps I can make her let me bring Jacky home with me!" she said—which showed to what heights beyond common sense she had risen.

At the little house on Maple Street she rang the bell, though she had a crazy impulse to bang upon the door to hurry Lily! But she rang, and rang again, before she heard a child's voice: "Maw. Somebody at the door."

"Well, go open it, can't you?"

She heard little scuffing steps on the oilcloth in the hall; then the door opened, and Jacky stood there. He fixed his blue, impersonal eyes upon her, and waited.

"Is your mother in?" Eleanor said, breathlessly.

"Yes, ma'am," said Jacky.

"Who is it?" Lily called to him; she was somewhere in the back of the house, and Eleanor could hear the clatter of dishes being gathered up from an unseen supper table. Jacky, unable to answer his mother's question, was calmly silent.

"My land! That child's a reg'lar dummy! Jacky, who is it?"

"I do' know," Jacky called back.

"I am Mrs. Curtis," Eleanor said; "I want to see your mother."

"She says," Jacky called—then paused, because it occurred to him to hang on to the door knob and swing back and forth, his heels scraping over the oilcloth; "she says," said Jacky, "she's Mrs. Curtis."

The noise of the dishes stopped short. In the dining room Lily stood stock-still; "My God!" she said. Then her eyes narrowed and her jaw set; she whipped off her apron and turned down her sleeves; she had made up her mind: "I'll lie it through."

She came out in the hall, which was scented with rose geraniums and reeked with the smell of bacon fat, and said, with mincing politeness, "Were you wishing to see me?"

"Yes," Eleanor said.

"Step right in," said Lily, opening the parlor door. "Won't you be seated?" Then she struck a match on the sole of her shoe, lit the gas, blew out the match, and turned to look at her visitor. She put her hand over her mouth and gasped. Under her breath she said, "His mother!"

"Mrs. Dale," Eleanor began—

"Well, there!" said Lily, pleasantly (but she was pale); "I guess you have the advantage of me. What did you say your name was?"

"My name is Curtis. Mrs. Dale, I—I know about your little boy."

"Is that so?" Lily said, with the simper proper when speaking to strangers.

"I mean," Eleanor said, "I know about—" her lips were so dry she stopped to moisten them—"about Mr. Curtis and you."

"I ain't acquainted with your son."

Eleanor caught her breath, but went on, "I haven't come to reproach you."

Lily tossed her head. "Reproach? Me? Well, I must say, I don't see no cause why you should! I don't know no Mr. Curtis!" She was alertly on guard for Maurice; "I guess you've mixed me up with some other lady."

"Please!" Eleanor said; "I know. He told me—about Jacky."

Instantly Lily's desire to defend Maurice was tempered by impatience with him; the idea of him letting on to his mother! Then, noticing her boy, who was silently observing the caller from the doorway, she said:

"Jacky! Go right out of this room."

"Won't," said Jacky. "She gimme the horn," he remarked.

"Aw, now, sweety, go on out!" Lily entreated.

Jacky said, calmly, "Won't."

At which his mother got up and stamped her foot. "Clear right out of this room, or I'll see to you! Do you hear me? Go on, now, or I'll give you a reg'lar spanking!"

Jacky ran. He never obeyed her when he could help it, but he always recognized the moment when he couldn't help it. Lily closed the door, and stood with her back against it, looking at her caller.

"Well," she said, "if you are on to it, I'm sure you ain't going to make trouble for him with his wife."

"I am his wife."

"His wife?" They looked at each other for a speechess moment. Then the tears sprang to Lily's eyes. "Oh, you poor soul!" she said. "Say, don't feel bad! It's pretty near ten years ago; he was just a kid. Since then—honest to God, I give you my word, he 'ain't hardly said 'How do you do' to me!"

"I know," Eleanor said; her hands were gripped hard together; "I know that. I know he has been ... perfectly true to me—lately. I am not saying a word about that. It's the child. I want to make a proposition to you about the child." Her lips trembled, but she smiled; she remembered to smile, because if she didn't look pleasant Lily might get angry. She was a little frightened; but she gave a nervous laugh. She spoke with gentleness, almost with sweetness. "I came to see you, Mrs. Dale, because I hope you and I can make some arrangement about the little boy. I want to help you by relieving you of—of his support. I mean," said Eleanor, still smiling with her trembling lips, "I mean, I will take him, and bring him up, so as to save you the expense." Lily's amazed recoil made her break into entreaty; "My husband wants him, and I do, too! I thought perhaps you'd let him go home with me to-night? I—I promise I'll take the best of care of him!"

Lily was too dumfounded to speak, but her thoughts raced. "For the land's sake!" she said under her breath. She was sitting down now, but her hands in her lap had doubled into rosy fighting fists.

Her silence terrified Eleanor. "If you'll give him to me," she said, "I will do anything for you—anything! If you'll just let Mr. Curtis have him." She did not mean to, but suddenly she was crying, and began to fumble for her handkerchief.

"Well, if this ain't the limit!" said Lily, and jumped up and ran to her, and put her arms around her. ("Here, take mine! It's clean.") "Say, I'm that sorry for you, I don't know what to do!" Her own tears overflowed.

Eleanor, wincing away from the gush of perfumery from the little clean handkerchief, clutched at Lily's small plump hand—"I'll tell you what to do," Eleanor said; "Give me Jacky!"

Lily, kneeling beside her, cried, honestly and openly. "There!—now!" she said, patting Eleanor's shoulder; "don't you cry! Mrs. Curtis, now look,"—she spoke soothingly, as if to a child, with her arm around Eleanor—"you know I can't let my little boy go? Why, think how you'd feel yourself, if you had a little boy and anybody tried to get him. Would you give him up? 'Course you wouldn't! Why, I wouldn't let Jacky go away from me, even for a day, not for the world! An' he ain't anything to Mr. Curtis. Honest! That's the truth. Now, don't you cry, dear!"

"You can see him often; I promise you, you can see him."

In spite of her pity, Lily's yellow eyes gleamed: "'See' my own child? Well, I guess!"

"I'll give you anything," Eleanor said; "I have a little money—about six hundred dollars a year; I'll give it to you, if you'll let Mr. Curtis have him."

"Sell Jacky for six hundred dollars?" Lily said. "I wouldn't sell him for six thousand dollars, or six million!" She drew away from Eleanor's beseeching hands. "How long has Mr. Curtis thought enough of Jacky to pay six hundred dollars for him? You can tell Mr. Curtis, from me, that I ain't no cheap trader, to give away my child for six hundred dollars!" She sprang up, putting her clenched fists on her fat hips, and wagging her head. "Why," she demanded, raucously, "didn't you have a child of your own for him, 'stead of trying to get another woman's child away from her?"

It was a hideous blow. Eleanor gasped with pain; and instantly Lily's anger was gone.

"Say! I didn't mean that! 'Course you couldn't, at your age. I oughtn't to have said it!"

Eleanor, dumb for a moment after that deadly question, began, faintly: "Mr. Curtis will do so much for him, Mrs. Dale; he'll educate him, and—"

"I can educate him," Lily said; "you tell Mr. Curtis that; you tell him I thank him for nothing!—I can educate my child to beat the band. I don't want any help from him. But—" she was on her knees again, stroking Eleanor's shoulder—"but if he's mean to you because you haven't had any children, I—I—I'll see to him! Well—I've always thought, what with him fussing about 'grammar,' and 'truth,' he'd be a hard man to live with. But if he's been mean to you he'd ought to be ashamed of himself!"

"Oh, he doesn't even know that I have come!" Eleanor said; "he mustn't know it. Oh, please!" She was terrified. "Don't tell him, Mrs. Dale. Promise me you won't! He would be angry."

Her frightened despair was pitiful; Lily was at her wits' end. "My soul and body!" she thought, "what am I going to do with her?" But what was all this business? Mrs. Curtis asking for Jacky—and Mr. Curtis not knowing it? What was all this funny business? "Now I tell you," she said; "you and me are just two ladies who understand each other, and I'm going to be straight with you: if Mr. Curtis is trying to get my child away from me, he'll have a sweet time doing it! There's other places than Medfield to live in. I have a friend in New York, a society lady; she's always after me to come and live there. Mind! I'm not mad at you, you poor woman that couldn't have a baby—it's him I'm mad at! He knows Jacky is mine, and I'll go to New York before I'll—"

"Oh, don't say that!" Eleanor pleaded; "my husband hasn't tried to get Jacky; it's just I!"

She saw, with panic, that what Maurice had said was true—Lily might "run"! If she did, there would be no hope of getting Jacky ... and Edith would be in Mercer....

"Mrs. Dale, promise me you'll stay in Medfield? It was only I who was trying to get Jacky; Mr. Curtis never thought of such a thing! I wanted him. I'd do everything for him; I'd—I'd give him music lessons."

"Honest," said Lily, soberly, "I believe you're crazy."

She looked crazy—this poor, gray-haired woman of pitiful dignity and breeding. ("I bet she's sixty!" Lily thought)—this old, childless woman, with a "Mrs." to her name, pleading with a mother to give up her boy, so he could have "music lessons"! "And Mr. Curtis's up against that," Lily thought, and instantly her anger at Maurice ebbed. "There, dear," she said, touching Eleanor's wet cheeks gently with that perfumed handkerchief; "I don't believe you've had any supper. I'm going to get you something to eat—"

"No, please; please no!" Eleanor said. She had risen. She thought, "If she says 'dear' again, I'll—I'll die!" ... "I promise you on my word of honor," she said, faintly, "that I won't try to take Jacky away from you, if—" she paused; it was terrible to have a secret with this woman; it put her in her power, but she couldn't help it—"I won't try to get him, if you won't tell Mr. Curtis that I ... have been here? Please promise me!"

"Don't you worry," Lily said, reassuringly; "I won't give you away to him."

Eleanor was moving, stumbling a little, toward the door; Lily hesitated, then ran and caught her own coat and hat from the rack in the hall.

"Wait!" she said, pinning her hat on at a hasty and uncertain angle; "I'm going with you! It ain't right for you to go by yourself ... Jacky," she called out to the kitchen, "you be a good boy! Maw'll be home soon."

Eleanor shook her head in wordless protest. But Lily had tucked her hand under her arm, and was walking along beside her. "He ought to look out for you!" Lily said; "I declare, I've a mind to tell that man what I think of him!" On the car, while Eleanor with shaking hands was opening her purse, Lily quickly paid both fares, saying, politely, in answer to Eleanor's confused protest, "That's all right!" There was no talk between them. Lily was too perplexed to say anything, and Eleanor was too frightened. So they rode, side by side, almost to Maurice's door. There, standing on the step while Eleanor took her latch key from her pocketbook, Lily said, cheerfully, "Now you go and get a cup of tea—you're all wore out!" Then she hurried off to catch a Medfield car. "I declare," said little Lily, "I don't know which is the worse off, him or her!"



CHAPTER XXXII

Eleanor, letting herself into her silent house, saw, with relief, that the library was dark, and knew that Maurice had gone to the station and she could be alone. She felt her way into the room, blundering against his big chair; the fire was almost out, and without waiting to turn on the light she thrust some kindling under a charred log and knelt down and took up the bellows. A spark brightened, ran backward under the film of ashes, then a flame hesitated, caught—and there was a little winking blaze.

"Another failure," Eleanor said. She remembered with what eager hope she had started for Lily's house; "I was going to 'bring him home' with me! What a fool I was! ... I always fail," she said. Once more, she had "marched up a hill—and—then—marched—down—again"! Her sense of failure was like a dragging weight under her breastbone! She had not made Maurice happy; she had not given him children; she had not kept Edith out of his life. Failure! Failure! "But he loves me; he said so, when I told him I forgave him about Lily. Of course I oughtn't to have married him. But I loved him ... so much. And I did want to have just a little happiness! I never had had any." She sat there, the bellows in her white, ineffectual hands, looking into the fire; how capable Lily's hands were! She remembered the sturdy left hand, and that shiny band of gold ... Then she looked at her own slender wedding ring, and that made her think of the circle of braided grass; and the locust blossoms; and the field—and the children who were to come there on the wedding anniversaries! And now—Maurice's child called another woman "mother"!... Well, she had tried to bring him back to Maurice; tried, and failed, with hideous humiliation—for, instead of bringing Jacky back, this "mother" had brought her back!... "And she paid my car fare!" It was intolerable. "I must send her five cents, somehow!"

She sat on the floor, leaning against Maurice's chair, until midnight; the log burned through, broke apart, and smoldered into ashes. Once she put her cheek down on the broad arm of the chair, then kissed it—for his hand had rested on it!—his dear young hand—In the deepening chilliness, watching the ashes, she ached with the sense of her last failure; but most of the time she thought of Edith, and of what she believed she had read in those humorous, candid eyes. "She dared, before me!—to show him that she was in love with him! He doesn't care for her—I know that. But I won't have her come here, to my own house, and make love to him. How can I keep her from coming? Oh, if I could only get Jacky!"

But she couldn't get him. She had accepted that as final. The talk in Lily's parlor proved that there was not the slightest hope of getting Jacky. So the only thing for her to do was to keep Edith out of her house. When, at nearly one o'clock, shivering, she went up to her room, she was absorbed in thinking how she could do this. With any other girl it would have been simple enough; never invite her! But not Edith. Edith came without an invitation. Edith had, Eleanor thought, "no delicacy." She had always been that way. She had always lacked ordinary refinement! From the very first, she had run after Maurice. "She is capable of kissing him," Eleanor told herself; "and saying she did it because he was like a brother!" Strangely enough, in this blaze of jealousy she had no flicker of resentment at Lily! Lily (now that she had seen her) was to Eleanor merely the woman to whom Jacky belonged. Looking back on those months that followed her discovery of Lily, and contrasting the agony she had felt then with her despair about Edith now, she was faintly surprised at the difference in her pain. This was probably because faithlessness of the body is not so deadly an insult to Love as faithlessness of the mind. But Eleanor did not, of course, make any such explanation. She just said to herself that Maurice had been a boy when he had been untrue to her, and she herself had been, in some ways, to blame; and he had confessed, and been forgiven. So Lily was now of no consequence—except as she interfered with Eleanor's passionate wish to have Jacky. So she did not hate Lily, or fear her (though she was humiliated at that car fare!). But she did hate Edith, and fear of her was agony.... So she would, somehow, keep her out of the house!

Just as she was getting into bed, she wiped her eyes, then cringed at a gust of perfumery—and realized that she had brought Lily's handkerchief back with her! It was a last abasement: the woman's horrible handkerchief. She burst into hysterical weeping.... The next morning, when she came down to breakfast, her face was haggard with those ravaging tears, and with the fatigue of hating. Even before she had her coffee, she burned the scented scrap of machine-embroidered linen, pressing it down between the logs in the library fireplace; but she could not burn her hate; it burned her!

She was so worn out that when, a little before luncheon, Edith suddenly came breezily in, she was, at first, too confused to know what to say to her.... It was an incredibly mild day; on the shady side of the back yard there was still a sooty heap of melting snow, but the sky was turquoise, soaring without a cloud and brimmed with light, so that the shadows of the bare branches of the poplar, clear-cut like jet, crisscrossed on the brick path; in the border, the brown fangs of the tulips had bitten up through the wet earth, and two militant crocuses had raised their tight-furled purple standards. Eleanor, tempted by the sunshine, had come here, muffled up in an elderly white shawl, to sit by the little painted table—built so long ago for Edith's pleasure! She had put old Bingo's basket in the sun, and stroked him gently; he was very helpless now, and ate nothing except from her hands.

"Poor little Bingo!" Eleanor said; "dear little Bingo!" Bingo growled, and Eleanor looked up to see why—Edith was on the iron veranda.

"Hullo!" Edith said, gayly; "isn't it a wonderful day? I just ran in—" She came down the twisted stairway and, unasked and smiling, sat down at the table. "Bingo! Don't you know your friends? One would think I was a burglar! Oh, Eleanor, the tulips are up! Do you remember when Maurice and I planted them?"

Eleanor's throat tightened. She made some gasping assent.

"I came 'round," Edith said—her frank eyes looked straight into Eleanor's eyes, dark and agonized—"I ran in, because I'm afraid you thought, yesterday, that I wanted to quarter myself on you? And I just wanted to say, don't give it a thought! I perfectly understand that sometimes it's inconvenient to have company, and—"

"It's not inconvenient to have company," Eleanor said.

Edith stopped short. ("What a dead give-away!" she thought; "she dislikes me!") Then she tried, generously, to cover the "give-away" up: She said something about guests and servants: "We're having an awful time at Green Hill—servants are the limit! When a maid stays six weeks, we call her an old family retainer!"

Eleanor said, "I have no difficulty with maids. That is not why I prefer not to have ... company."

By this time, of course, Edith's one thought was to get away, with dignity; but dignity, when you've had your face slapped, is almost impossible. So Edith (being Edith!) chose Truth, and didn't trouble herself with dignity! "Eleanor," she said, "I know it's me you don't want. I felt it last night. I'm afraid I've done something that has offended you. Have I? Truly, Eleanor, I haven't meant to! What is it? Let's talk it out. Eleanor, what have I done?" She put her hands down on Eleanor's, clasped rigidly on the table.

"Please!" Eleanor said, and drew her hands away.

"Oh," Edith said, pitifully, "you are troubled!"

Eleanor said, with a gasp: "Not at all ... Edith, I am afraid I must ask you to ... excuse me. I'm busy."

Edith was too amazed to speak; she could not, indeed, think of anything to say! This wasn't "dislike." "Why, she hates me!" she thought. "Why does she hate me? Shall I not notice it? Shall I talk about something else?" But she could not talk of anything else; she could only speak her swift, honest thought: "Eleanor, why do you dislike me? Maurice and I have been friends—we have been like brother and sister—ever since I can remember. Oh, Eleanor, I want you to like me, too! Please don't keep me away from you and Maurice!"

Eleanor said, rapidly: "He's not your brother; and it would be difficult to keep you away from him. You go to his office to find him."

There was a dead silence. Edith grew very pale. At last she understood. Eleanor was jealous ... Of her! They looked at each other, the angry woman and the dumfounded girl. "Jealous? Of me?" Edith thought. "Why me? Maurice only cares for me as if I was his sister! ... And I don't do Eleanor any harm by—loving him." ... Eleanor was gasping out a torrent of assailing words:

"Girls are different from what they were in my day. Then, they didn't openly run after men! Now, apparently, they do. Certainly you do. You always have. I'm not blind, Edith. I have known what was going on; when you were living with us and I had a headache, you used to talk to him, and try and be clever—to make him think I was dull, when it was only that—I was too ill to talk! And you kept him down in the garden until midnight, when he might have been sitting with me on the porch. And you made him go skating. And now you look at him! I know what that means. A girl doesn't look that way at a man, unless—"

There was dead silence.

"Unless she's in love with him. But don't think that, though you are in love with him, he cares for you! He does not. He cares for no one but me. He told me so."

Silence.

"Can you deny that you care for my husband?" Edith opened her lips—and closed them again. "You don't deny it," Eleanor said; "you can't." She put her head down on her arms on the table; her fifty years engulfed her. She said, in a whisper, "He doesn't love me."

Instantly Edith's arms were around her. "Eleanor, dear! Don't—don't! He does love you—he does! I'd perfectly hate him if he didn't! Oh, Eleanor, poor Eleanor! Don't cry; Maurice does love you. He doesn't care a copper for me!" The tears were running down her face. She bent and kissed Eleanor's hands, clenched on the table, and then tried to draw the gray head against her tender young breast.

Eleanor put out frantic hands, as if to push away some suffocating pressure. Both of these women—Lily, with her car fare and her handkerchief; Edith, with her impudent "advice" to Maurice not to have secrets from his wife—pitied her! She would not be pitied by them!

"Don't touch me!" she said, furiously; "you love my husband."

Edith heard her own blood pounding in her ears.

"Don't you?" said Eleanor; her face was furrowed with pain; "Don't you?"

It was a moment of naked truth. "I have loved Maurice," Edith said, steadily, "ever since I was a child. I always shall. I would like to love you, too, Eleanor, if you would let me. But nothing—nothing! shall ever break up my ... affection for Maurice."

"You might as well call it love."

Edith, rising, said, very low: "Well, I will call it love. I am not ashamed. I am not wronging you. You have no need to be jealous of me, Eleanor. He cares nothing for me."

Eleanor struck the table with her clenched fists. "You shall never have him!" she said.

Edith turned, silently, and went up the veranda stairs and out of the house.



CHAPTER XXXIII

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!"



CHAPTER XXXIV

It was after ten o'clock that night when Eleanor's icy fingers fumbled at Mrs. Newbolt's doorbell. The ring was not heard at first, because her aunt and Edith Houghton and Johnny Bennett were celebrating his departure the next day for South America, by making a Welsh rabbit in a chafing dish before the parlor fire. Mrs. Newbolt, entering into the occasion with voluble reminiscences, was having a very good time. She liked Youth, and she liked Welsh rabbits, and she liked an audience; and she had all three! Then the doorbell rang. And again.

"For Heaven's sake!" said Mrs. Newbolt; "at this time of night! Johnny, the girls have gone to bed; you go and answer it, like a good boy."

"Dump in some more beer, Edith," Johnny commanded, and went out into the hall, whistling. A moment later the other two heard his startled voice, "Why, come right in!" There was no reply, just shuffling steps; then Eleanor, silent, without any hat, her hair plastered down her ghastly cheeks, her face bruised and soiled with sand, stood in the doorway, the astonished John Bennett behind her. Everybody spoke at once:

"Eleanor! What has happened?"

"Eleanor! Where is your hat?"

"Good gracious! Eleanor—"

She was perfectly still. Just looking at them, during that blank moment before everything became a confusion of jostling assistance. Edith rushed to help her off with her coat. Johnny said, "Mrs. Newbolt, where can I get some whisky?" Mrs. Newbolt felt the soaking skirt, and tried to unfasten the belt so that the wet mass might fall to the floor.

Eleanor was rigid. "Get a doctor!" Edith commanded.

Johnny ran to the telephone.

"No," Eleanor whispered.

But nobody paid any attention to her. Johnny, at the telephone, was telling Mrs. Newbolt's doctor to hurry! Mrs. Newbolt herself had run, wheezing, to open the spare-room bed and get out extra blankets, and fill hot-water bottles; then, somehow or other, she and Edith got Eleanor upstairs, undressed her, put her into the big four-poster, and held a tumbler of hot whisky and water to her lips. By the time Doctor James arrived she had begun to shiver violently; but she was still silent. The trolley ride into town, with staring passengers and a conductor who thought she had been drinking, and tried to be jocose, had chilled her to the bone, and the gradual dulling of thought had left only one thing clear to her: She mustn't go home, because Maurice might possibly be there! And if he was, then he would know! So she must go—somewhere. She went first to Mrs. O'Brien's, climbing the three long flights of stairs and feeling her way along dark entries to the old woman's door. She stood there shuddering and knocking; a single gas jet, wavering in the draughty entry, made her shadow lurch on the cracked plaster of the wall; it occurred to her that she would like to put her frozen hands around the little flame to warm them. Then she knocked again. There was no answer, so, shaking from head to foot, she felt her way downstairs again to the street, where the reflection of an occasional gas lamp gleamed and flickered on the wet asphalt. "I'll go to Auntie's," she thought.