This Side of Glory (30 page)

“I don’t understand it myself,” Eleanor responded. “Maybe you can explain it.”

“Oh, I cannot! I shall never understand it. My dear, if you could know how my heart has bled for you! But of course you don’t know what I’m talking about?”

“How should I?”

“Indeed, how should you? How could you? I have dreaded this, I have prayed over it, till I have finally concluded it is my duty to tell you, it was somebody’s duty to do so and it was evident nobody else was going to. Oh, how I have shrunk from undertaking such a task! I’m related to Kester, his dear mother is my cousin, you know, and while I hesitate to speak evil of my own flesh and blood I must say Kester was always a wild boy, broke our hearts almost, and we did think, oh, we hoped, marriage might be the making of him—”

With a blank smile on her face, Eleanor was thinking, I won’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me writhe, not if it kills me. She listened stolidly.

“But
don’t
you understand what I mean?” Sylvia was pleading.

Eleanor continued to smile, and shook her head. “I’m quite in the dark, Cousin Sylvia. Won’t you have another cup of coffee?”

Sylvia declined. She talked ahead in her expressionless voice, probing, hinting, watching. Eleanor remained obtuse. “The wife is always the last to hear these things,” Sylvia lamented after awhile. “And that is shameful. People mean to be kind about not speaking, but somebody
ought
to speak, and someone in the family is better than an outsider, don’t you agree with me, someone related to Kester?”

“I thought nearly everybody in town was related to Kester.”

“Yes, the family had many branches. But someone who has been intimate with the household all her life is certainly better than a more remote relative, don’t you think, when something has to be spoken of?”

“But what has to be spoken of?” Eleanor civilly inquired.

“My poor, innocent girl, can it be possible that you still don’t understand?”

“Understand what, Cousin Sylvia?”

“Why my dear, you cannot believe everyone doesn’t know Kester is working at the government cotton station, has been there for two months?”

“Why of course, I thought everybody knew that. Why shouldn’t they?”

“But Eleanor, have you heard no whisper of anything further?”

“No whisper? What sort of whisper?”

“Oh you poor woman, about Isabel Valcour.” Now that she had said it Sylvia’s glance sneaked over Eleanor’s face. Eleanor smiled and waited until Sylvia resumed her babbling. “Poor Isabel. Such a charming girl, and from such a lovely family, it’s all so sad. So very sad. Her brilliant marriage, and then her being left a widow like that, so young. Until now we thought she had no interest in anyone hereabouts, we thought her heart was in another hemisphere.” Sylvia said it with a slow shake of the head, as though the world contained dozens of hemispheres and she would not betray confidence by revealing in which one of them poor Isabel had left her heart. “But being alone, and then returning here for the duration of the war, it must have made the poor girl so unhappy, and she had no parents, no children. A woman should not be alone, she should have children and a home, and yet it does seem as if we good women who try to do our duty get least appreciation of all, doesn’t it?”

“If you mean me, I’ve been quite well appreciated, Cousin Sylvia.” Eleanor spoke rigidly; by this time she was so angry at Sylvia’s meddling that she could have choked her with pleasure.

“Oh my dear, can it be that your affection for Kester blinds you so? That you really cannot see what is happening? Kester, Isabel—”

She paused expectantly. Eleanor had planned no answer, but she was suddenly possessed by a cool disdain. She looked straight at Sylvia and began to laugh. “Really, Cousin Sylvia!” she exclaimed.

Cousin Sylvia stared incredulously.

Eleanor continued to laugh at her. “Why Cousin Sylvia, have you come all the way over here in this fog to tell me Kester has been having an affair with Isabel Valcour? Did you, could you possibly, think I didn’t know it?”

Cousin Sylvia gasped. She was amazed, and resentful that her own hope of triumph had been wasted. “So somebody has told you before?” she managed to ask.

Eleanor poured herself a third cup of coffee and lifted her eyes to look at Sylvia’s ridiculous fluffy clothes, her rouged effort to look young, and she felt no pity. “I’m afraid you’re still living in the nineteenth century,” she said. “Kester and I understand each other perfectly.”

“Glub,” said Cousin Sylvia.

Eleanor gathered up her own weapons. “To be sure, a woman of your age couldn’t be expected to understand the younger generation. I suppose you cling to the quaint old notion that once people are married they should treat members of the other sex like lepers. Dear dear, how boresome such a life must have been! But people were expected to be stodgy in your day, weren’t they?”

Sylvia managed to say, “Then you know about Isabel—and you don’t mind?”

“Oh Cousin Sylvia, even at your age one must realize the modern world has changed. We’ve become so much more broadminded since you were young. The new freedom, you know. Kester and I wouldn’t dream of keeping each other in that old-fashioned bondage.”

“Each other?” Sylvia echoed. She was leaning forward, her hands fidgeting on the arms of her chair.

Eleanor reached over and patted Sylvia’s hand kindly. “Now don’t be troubled. I know you meant to be very helpful when you came over to tell me what you thought I didn’t know. It was just your goodness of heart that prompted you, and I appreciate it. But try to understand that modern people regard these things differently.”

Cousin Sylvia blinked, while Eleanor regarded her with a little smile of pitying amusement. After a moment Cousin Sylvia stood up. She lifted herself to her full height, which was not very high.

“To laugh at such things!” she exclaimed in horror. “Eleanor Larne, you have no moral sense whatever. I am ashamed to have tried to do you a kindness.”

“I think you should be.” Eleanor stood up too, offering Sylvia her coat and handbag. “It makes you quite ridiculous, you know, busying yourself with things you don’t understand.”

“I understand morality and decency!” Sylvia retorted. She snatched her coat and scrambled into it. “I do not understand people who have no power of righteous indignation. When you talk like that it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see you breaking your marriage vows too, not at all! Stop laughing at me!”

Eleanor did not obey her. “Kester used to tell me you were funny,” she said. “You certainly are.” She opened the door. “Thank you for a very diverting morning.”

Sylvia stepped grandly into the hall. “We might have known. When a man of fine breeding marries a woman who’s common as pig-tracks—we might have
known.”

“You might have known,” Eleanor said gently as she followed Sylvia out, “that if I had needed your advice I should have asked for it. Of course I understand your interest—it must be very dull to have nothing to do but stagnate among the tombs of your ancestors.” She opened the front door. “Thank you so much for calling, Cousin Sylvia.”

“I’m not
your
cousin,” Sylvia snorted in farewell.

Eleanor watched her marching across the gallery and down the front steps. She went back up to her own room, her lips curling with rage as she climbed the stairs.

Then, regarding the matter of marital infidelity exactly as she would have regarded it had she lived in the administration of President Millard Fillmore, Eleanor dropped down on the bed and put her head on the pillow miserably and cried. She cried until she had to give her red eyes a long treatment with hot water and ice before she was willing to face the children at dinner.

3

Cornelia came in from school lamenting the cloudy weather, which had prevented her playing outdoors at recess and promised to keep her in all the afternoon, while Philip, who had not objected to staying indoors during the morning, immediately joined her. Eleanor cheered them by promising that as tomorrow was a Saturday and Cornelia would not have to go to school, if the weather cleared she would take them both to town to buy new clothes for a Christmas party to which they had been invited. This put them into better humor, and to keep them amused for the afternoon Eleanor got out a set of cardboard cutouts she had meant as a Christmas present and gave it to Cornelia and Philip to play with. The set consisted of heads, legs and bodies of animals printed on sheets of thin cardboard, ready to be cut out and put together. As they both liked to make things, when they were provided with blunt-pointed scissors and a pot of paste they settled down by the nursery fire, happily prepared to create disorder. They were so lovable as they sat on the floor chattering with each other, and their exuberance so remindful of Kester’s, that Eleanor felt a thrust of pain as she talked to them.

Leaving the children in Dilcy’s care she went to her own room and sat down in front of the fire. She wondered what Kester was doing, what he was thinking, if he was missing the children. Whatever he thought of her, she could not believe it possible that he would continue to neglect Cornelia and Philip. She had never seen a man who appeared to enjoy his children more than Kester did. But she did not, she told herself for the hundredth time, want him to come back to her merely for their sake; that would be a blow neither her love nor her pride could endure. She wanted Kester to come back because he loved her. He had loved her very deeply, and no matter how much she had hurt and angered him on their last evening together one did not with a single stroke tear down a structure that had been so many years in the building. If it were true about Isabel, she still was convinced that Kester loved her; she believed he had turned to Isabel as some men turned to gambling or alcohol in periods when they could not face themselves. But there were men, she remembered, who eventually found their means of evasion a necessary curtain between themselves and impossible reality.

Or was this, she asked, merely her pride speaking in its own defense, unable to acknowledge that she had failed in the one thing she had tried hardest to do?

She did not know. “Eleanor, stop it!” she begged herself.
“Do
something!”

But she had no idea what should be done. Maybe fresh air and exercise would be a help. It was cloudy but not raining, with occasional flecks of sunshine breaking through the gloom. If she took a long walk it might clear her mind. She changed into a pair of flat-heeled shoes, put on a coat and started walking along the river road.

After a few minutes she was glad she had come out. The wind was damp, and blew refreshingly through her hair, for she had come without a hat. The countryside had a look of peace. On either side of the road were the oaks, their draperies of moss blowing, and behind the oaks the fields were resting for their spring rebirth. In the trees the wind was like a serious and simple melody. Hands in her coat pockets, Eleanor walked fast, following the turns of the road and paying no attention to the occasional car or wagon that passed her. In times of turbulence the outdoors could always quiet her spirits.

She walked and walked, finally dulling even such slight thought as she had with the rhythm of movement. The wind was increasing; Eleanor paused a moment to place several hairpins more firmly, and went on. Veils of mist began to blow in from the river.

She became conscious that she was getting tired. Looking around, she thought she must have walked four or five miles, though she did not seem to have come very far. Her idea of distance on the river road had been fashioned by automobiles; in pre-machine days the plantations must have been remote. Eleanor remembered having heard that it used to be a four days’ journey from Ardeith to New Orleans. River steamboats had reduced that to less than a day, and now trains did it in less than two hours. Aeroplanes—

Suddenly she realized that it was quite dark.

She had known it was late, but had paid little attention to the day’s declining. Eleanor stopped where she was, unsure how long it had taken her to walk this far and calling herself stupid for not considering before that she was going to have to walk home along this lonesome country road. A wisp of hair blew across her face as she turned around and started back the way she had come.

The wind was screaming in the trees. Eleanor shivered and turned up her coat collar. Though the coat was not a heavy one, walking had kept her warm, but now the wind had begun to cut down the back of her neck and come through the fabric across her shoulders. As she fastened the collar around her throat a splash of rain struck her eyes.

The rain came violently. There was nothing invigorating about it; it tumbled down in a drowning torrent, lashing her like whips. In a few minutes she was soaked to the skin. Rain was pouring across her eyes and down her back, and the road had turned to a strip of mud. The wind blew her from side to side like a stalk. She could not see at all. More than once she stumbled into a tree, and as she put her feet blindly into puddles the mud caught and held her shoes till it was hard to take another step.

She was less frightened than irritated at her own lack of foresight. Any idiot could have noticed the weather, especially an idiot who had been born in Louisiana and experienced scores of these winter rains. It was going to rain for hours, drenching the earth and not pausing to give any peace to those who might be struggling through the downpour. Above her the oaks were creaking as the wind lashed through them. Her hair full of water and her shoes heavy with mud, her skirt flapping wetly against her legs, Eleanor fought her way along. Several times she nearly fell down, for her feet were so cold as to be almost without sensation. Through her battle with the rain came recollections of her last year’s pneumonia.

The headlights of a car cut a blurry shaft through the rain. Eleanor stopped short, ready to cry out with thankfulness. The car was going slowly and carefully, and she stepped in front of the lights, too miserable to think beyond the bliss of dryness. The car drew up alongside her and a Negro chauffeur leaned out.