Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

“ 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. ”

“ Listen to this (only I can't say just exactly the words!) : 'Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet jealousy'—oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know—'yet jealousy extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames.'"
"Who said that?" Maurice said.
Edith said she'd forgotten: "But I bet it's true. I'd simply hate a jealous person, no matter how much they loved me! Wouldn't you, Eleanor? Wouldn't you hate Maurice if he was jealous of you? I declare I don't see how you can be so fond of Bingo!" ”

“ Edith said; "that's why I came out here. She wants you, Maurice."
"All right," he said, briefly; and struck his fork down in the earth. "I've got to go, Johnny."
To do one's duty without love is doubtless better than to fail in doing one's duty, but it has its risks. Maurice's heartless "kindness" to his wife was like a desert creeping across fertile earth; the eager generosity of boyhood had long ago hardened into the gray aridity of mere endurance.
Edith turned and walked back with him; they were both silent until Maurice said, "You've got Johnny's scalp all right, Skeezics." ”

“ 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! ”

“ But his anxiety—though he did not know it—was not entirely on Lily's account. For the first time in the child's life, Maurice was aware of Jacky as a possession. The tornado of the night before—the anger and fear and pity—had plowed down below the surface of his mind, and touched that subsoil of conscious responsibility for creation, the realization that, whether through love or through selfishness, the man who brings a child into this terrible, squalid, glorious world, is a creator, even as God is the Creator. ”

“ But when Maurice discovered that such acquaintance had also its risks, the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame. Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whipping instinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to go home and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She never would, of course! No woman would; Eleanor least of all. But oh, if he only could tell her! As he couldn't, remorse, with no outlet of words, smoldered on his consciousness, as some hidden and infected wound might smolder in his flesh. ”

“ Eleanor, upstairs, with Bingo's little silken head on her breast, did not feel young; she heard the noise, and smelled the boiling molasses, and knew that Mary would be cross when she came home and found the kitchen in a mess. "How can Maurice stand such childishness!" She lay there with a cologne-soaked handkerchief on her forehead, and sighed with pain. "Why doesn't he stop them?" she thought. She heard his shout of laughter, and Edith's screaming giggle, and moved her head to find a cool place on the pillow. "She's too old to romp with him." ”

“ They went out of the henhouse together in silence. Maurice was saying to himself, "I might not be able to get a job in New York... I'll fight." Yet certain traditional decencies, slowly emerging from the welter of his rage and terror, made him add, "If it was mine, I'd have to give her something... But it isn't. I'll fight."
He was so absorbed that before he knew it he had followed Edith to the studio, where, in the twilight. Mr. and Mrs. Houghton were sitting on the sofa together, hand in hand, and Eleanor was at the piano singing, softly, old songs that her hosts loved. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Oh, she must live!" It was then that, suddenly, agonizingly, in the midst of splashings, and Jacky's whines, and Lily's anxiety about soap and doughnuts, Maurice Curtis prayed ...
He did not know it was prayer; it was just a cry: "Do something—oh, do something! Do you hear me? She tried so hard to save Jacky. Make her get well!" So it was that, in his selfless cry for happiness for Eleanor, Maurice found all those differing realizations—Joy, and Law, and Life, and Love—and lo! they were one—a personality! God. ”

“ Eleanor said, and her voice softened. "Perhaps I could do something for her? She ought to make him marry her."
Maurice chuckled. "Oh, Nelly, you are innocent! No, my dear; she'll paint some more, and then, probably, get to drinking; and meet one or two more brutes. When she gets quite into the gutter, she'll die. The sooner the better! I mean, the less harm she'll do."
Eleanor's recoil of pain seemed to him as exquisite as a butterfly's shrinking from some harsh finger. He looked at her tenderly. "Star, you don't know the world! ”

“ Eleanor, reading the friendly words at the boarding-house breakfast table, said quickly to herself, "I don't want her... She would monopolize Maurice!" Then she hesitated; "He would be more comfortable in a house of his own... But Edith? Oh, I don't want her!"
She turned to show the letter to Maurice, but he was sitting sidewise, one arm over the back of his chair, in vociferous discussion with a fellow boarder. "No, sir!" he was declaring; "if they revise the rules again, they'll revise the guts out of the whole blessed game; they'll make it all muscle and no mind." ”

“ 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!" ”

“ And I shall never like anybody as much as Maurice, because there isn't anybody like him in the entire world. I've always thought he was exactly like Sir Walter Raleigh. Besides, I shall never marry anybody! But I mean, I don't see why it isn't enough for you to have me awfully fond of you?"
"Well, it isn't," Johnny said, briefly, "but don't you worry." He was white, but his tenderness was like a new sense. Edith had never seen this Johnny. Her entirely selfish impatience turned to shyness. "Edith," he said, very gently, "you don't understand, dear. You're awfully young—younger than your age. ”

“ Edith retorted; "Maurice, your biceps are simply great!"
"How she flatters him!" Eleanor thought; "And she knows he is looking at her." He was! Edith, lifting a forkful of hay, throwing the weight on her right thigh and straining backward with upraised arms, her big hat tumbling over one ear, and the sweat making her hair curl all around her forehead, was something any man would like to look at! No man would want to look at Eleanor—a tired, dull, jealous woman, whose eyes were blinking from the glare and whose face sagged with elderly fatigue. ”

“ Mary Houghton went into the library, where the fire was out, and the dust on tables and chairs bore witness to the fact that Bridget had devoted herself to Bingo; the room was gloomy, and smelled of soot. Little Bingo lay, stiff and chill, on the sofa; on a plate beside him was a chop rimmed in cold grease,—poor little, loving, jealous, old Bingo! "I hope it won't upset Mrs. Curtis," Mrs. Houghton told the maid; then gave directions about the stark little body. She found the letter in Eleanor's desk, and went back to Mrs. Newbolt's. "Love," she thought, "is as strong as death; stronger! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Maurice did not urge her. He and the other two took off their shoes and stockings; and went with squeals across the stubble, down a steep bank, to a pebbly point of sand, round which a sunny swirl of water chattered loudly, then went romping off into sparkling shallows. Edith's lifted skirt, as she stepped into the current, assured her against the wetting Eleanor had foreseen, and also showed her pretty legs—and Eleanor, on the bank, her tensely trembling hand cuddling Bingo against her knee, "guarded" her things! ”

“ When she was well again, the opportunity—if it was an opportunity!—was lost; her interest in Lily was not needed, because a call at the apartment house showed Maurice that Batty was forgiven. So he forgot his desire to lift the fallen, in more of those arid moments with Eleanor; reproaches—and reconciliations! Tears—and fire! But fires gradually die down under tears, no matter how one spends one's breath blowing loving words on the wet embers! Enough tears will put out any fire. ”

“ If she suffers because the rival is her inferior, that is not jealousy; it is the anguish of recognizing defects in her lover, and it, too, is noble, for she is unhappy, not because he has slighted her, but because he has slighted himself! Jealousy has no such noble elements; it is the unhappiness that Bingo knows—an ignoble agony! ... But Eleanor, like many pitiful wives, did not know this. Sitting there on the bank of the river, without aspiration for herself or regret for Maurice, she knew only the anguish of being neglected. ”

“ He tried to reassure himself by counting up Lily's good points; her present uprightness; her honest friendliness to him; her almost insane devotion to Jacky, and her pathetic aspiration for respectability, which was summed up in that one word of collective emptiness,—"Society." But immediately her bad points clamored in his mind; her ignorance and unmorality and vulgarity. "Truth is just a matter of expediency with her. If he gets to be a liar, I'll boot him!" Maurice would think of these bad points until he got perfectly frantic! ”

“ Edith, watching the retreating figure, never guessing those unshed tears, said, despairingly, to herself, "I suppose I ought to go home with her?" She dropped her pitchfork; "I'll come back after dinner, boys," she said; "I must look after Eleanor now."
"Quitter!" Maurice jeered; but Johnny said, "I'm glad she's gone; it's too much for a girl." His eyes followed her as she went running over the field to catch up with Eleanor, who, on the way back to the house, only poke once; she told Edith that flattery was bad taste the cup overflowed! "Men hate flattery," she said. ”

“ Maurice gave him the quarter and went into the parlor, where the south window was full of plants, and the sunshine was all a green fragrance of rose geraniums. When a shiningly clean, smiling Lily appeared—evidently from the kitchen, for she was carrying a plate of hot gingerbread—she found Maurice sitting down, his hands in his pockets, his long legs stretched out in front of him, baiting Jacky with questions, and chuckling at the courageous impudence of the youngster.
"He's no fool," said Maurice to himself. "This kid is a handful!" he told Lily ... "You're a bully cook!" ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Of course he was wrong; any cooking takes brains—and nobody seemed able, in his little household, to supply them. However, boarding was such a terrible threat, that Eleanor, dismayed at the idea of leaving that little room, waiting at the top of the house, with its ducks and shepherdesses; and thinking, too, of a whole tableful of people who would talk to Maurice! made heroic efforts to help Hannah, her mind fumbling over recipes and ingredients, as her hands fumbled over dishes and oven doors and dampers. ”

“ By this time there were days when he talked as little as possible to Eleanor about anything,—not because he was secretive—he hated secrecy! "It's next door to lying," he thought, faintly disgusted at himself,—but because she seemed to feel hurt if he was interested in anyone except herself. Maurice had passed the point which had seemed so terrible at Green Hill, where he had called his wife "silly." He never called her silly now. He merely, over and over, called himself a fool. ”

“ Maurice, intolerably irked, had moved across to the parapet and was staring out over the city. Below him spread the dim expanse of roofs and chimneys, with here and there the twinkle of light in an attic window. Leaning on the coping and looking down, he thought of the humanity under the dark roofs: a horizontal humanity—everybody asleep! The ugly fancy came to him that if that sleeping layer of bodies could be stirred up, there would be instantly a squirming mass of loathsome thoughts—maggots of lust, and shame, and jealousy, and fear. ”

“ Eleanor was, Maurice said, like music heard far off, through mists and moonlight in a dark garden, "full of—of—what are those sweet-smelling things, that bloom only at night?" (Mary Houghton looked fatigued.) "Well, anyway, what I mean is that she isn't like ordinary people, like me—"
"Or Johnny," Edith broke in, earnestly.
"Johnny? Gosh! Why, Mrs. Houghton, things that don't touch most human beings, affect her terribly. The dark, or thunderstorms, or—or anything, makes her nervous. You understand?" ”

“ As for people, I may talk to them; I may even—even be with them, or seem to like them, and—and do things, that—I don't love anybody but you, Eleanor; but I—I—"
It was a final clutch at the Hand that holds the stars. But his entreating voice broke, for she was kissing his confession from his lips. Those last words—"I don't love anybody but you"—folded her in complete content! "Dear," she said, "that's all I want—that you don't love anybody but me." She laid her wet cheek against his in silence. ”

“ She was living in the two-family house on Ash Street, with the dressmaker and her three children and feeble-minded father, in the lower flat. There was the desired back yard for Jacky, where a thicket of golden glow lounged against the fence, and where, tinder stretching clothes lines, a tiny garden overflowed with color and perfume. Every day little Lily would leave her own work (which was heavy, for she had several "mealers") and run downstairs to help Mrs. Hayes wash and dress the imbecile old man. And she kept a pot of hyacinths blooming on his window sill. ”

“ But I hope this poor, foolish woman's mind will keep young. If it doesn't, well, Maurice will just have to be tactful. If he is, it may not be so very bad," she said, with determined optimism.
"Kit, when a man has to be 'tactful' with his wife, God help him!—or a woman with her husband," he added in a sudden tender afterthought. "We've never been 'tactful' with each other, Mary?" She smiled, and put her cheek against his shoulder. "'Tactfulness' between a husband and wife," said Henry Houghton, "is confession that their marriage is a failure. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So I won't worry about Maurice just yet. Mother, may I have two helpings? When are they coming?"
"They haven't been asked yet," her father said, grimly. "I'm not going to concoct a letter, Mary, for a week. Let 'em worry! Maurice, confound him!—has never worried in his life. Everything rolls off him like water off a duck's back. It will do him good to chew nails for a while. I wish I was asleep!"
"Why, father!" Edith said, aghast; "I don't believe you want the Bride!"
"You're a very intelligent young person," her father said, scratching a match under the table and lighting a cigar. ”

“ Maurice laughed, but remembered that he was hungry and said again, "Let's board."
Eleanor, soothing Bingo, wild-eyed and trembling with jealous love, said no! she would try to have things better. "Perhaps I'll get as clever as Edith," she said—and her lip hardened.
He said he wished she would: "Edith used to make a chocolate cake I'd sell my soul for, pretty nearly! Why didn't Hannah give us hard-boiled eggs?" he pondered, burrowing in the luncheon basket for something more to eat; "they don't take brains!" ”

“ That burning grip held Maurice prisoner all the way downstairs; it chained him to the child until they reached the street. There the clutch relaxed, but for one poignant moment, as Maurice lifted Jacky into the ambulance, father and son looked into each other's eyes, and Maurice said—the words suddenly tumbling from his lips:
"Now, my little Jacky, you'll be good, won't you?" Then the ambulance rolled softly away, and he stood on the curbstone and felt his heart swelling in his throat: "Why did I say 'my'?" ”

“ Edith's first winter in Mercer went pretty well; she was not fussy about what she had to eat; "I can always stoke on bread and butter," she said, cheerfully; and she was patient with the aging Bingo's yapping jealousies; "The smaller a dog is, the more jealous he is!" she said, with good-humored contempt; and she didn't mind Eleanor's speechlessness. "I talk!" Edith said. But Maurice?... "I love him next to father and mother," Edith thought; but, all the same, she didn't know what to make of Maurice! ”

“ CHAPTER I Love is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. THE SONG OF SOLOMON, VIII, 6.
There is nothing in the world nobler, and lovelier, and more absurd, than a boy's lovemaking. And the joyousness of it!...
The boy of nineteen, Maurice Curtis, who on a certain June day lay in the blossoming grass at his wife's feet and looked up into her dark eyes, was embodied Joy! ”

“ Nature has nothing to do with reason. So, in its deep and beautiful and animal beginnings, Love, too, is irrational. It has to ascend to Reason! But Eleanor did not know these things. All she knew was that Maurice hurt her, a dozen times a day.
She was brooding over this one Sunday afternoon in late September, when, at the open window of her bedroom, with Bingo snoozing in her lap, she listened to Edith, down in the garden: "How about a jug of dahlias on the table?" ”

“ Eleanor, taught by Maurice, had learned to feel the strange loveliness of Mercer's ugliness, and it was her idea that Mr. Houghton should feel it, too. "Edith's too much of a child to appreciate it," she said.
"She's not much of a child; she's almost fourteen!"
"I think," said Eleanor, "that if she's fourteen, she's too old to be as free and easy with men—as she is with you."
"Me? I'm just like a brother! She has no more sense of beauty than a puppy, but she'll like the boat, provided she can row, and adore you."
"Nonsense!" Eleanor said. "Oh, I hope the dinner will be good." ”

“ The jealous woman always says this, never realizing the deeper truth, which is that she keeps herself out! Maurice did not notice how, all that winter, Eleanor was keeping herself out. She was steadily retreating into some inner solitude of her own. No one noticed it, except Mrs. O'Brien—and perhaps fat, elderly, snarling Bingo, who must sometimes, when his small pink tongue lapped her cheek, have tasted tears. ”