This Side of Glory (32 page)

“Forgive my slowness,” said Eleanor, “But as I don’t know what has been said to you about me, I don’t follow you.”

“What has been said to me?” Isabel echoed with scorn. “Do you think I need to be told anything? Do you think I can’t see what happened to him? Oh, you’re a fool, Eleanor!”

“Am I? It seems to me you are. I don’t know what visions you’re cherishing, but it’s evident you like believing them.”

Isabel challenged her swiftly. “Why don’t you stop that, Eleanor, and acknowledge you’ve lost? Can’t you confess just once in your life that there’s something you can’t do? Why don’t you get an office on top of a skyscraper and run a chain of factories? Why don’t you let Kester alone? He’s a human being!”

“Then why don’t you stop talking about him as if he were a library book?” Eleanor demanded. “He can’t be handed around.”

“He might as well be a library book from the way you’ve treated him. Why don’t you let him go while there’s still time for me to repair the damage you’ve done?”

“Damage? For you to repair?” Eleanor was holding herself so tensely that her back hurt. “You? A piece of mistletoe looking for something to cling to—”

“That’s what you’d call it,” exclaimed Isabel. “You’re so invincible! Don’t you know Kester wants to be needed? ‘After all I’ve done for him,’ you say, and you won’t understand that a man like Kester wants to believe he’s doing things for you. You thought you were giving him so much—oh, I’ve watched you, I’ve laughed at you—but you never gave him anything he wanted. The little triumphs, the little applauding whispers—Eleanor, Kester is coming to me because I can give him back his faith in himself, and you needn’t try to hold on because it’s no use. You’ve wrought destruction enough.”

Eleanor was hardly listening. She was so angry that Isabel’s taunts meant no more than a jingling of syllables. She realized that she was standing up, and Isabel was standing too. When they had risen to their feet she did not remember, but Isabel was going on, hardly having paused for breath.

“Kester comes from a long line of heroes—no matter what the Larne men were like, the women who loved them made them feel like heroes. What men call the charm of Southern girls—I mean Southern girls who come from families like ours—is simply that quality of giving a man faith in himself. We do it by instinct, all the time, even when we aren’t trying to, but give one of us a man she really loves and she can make him anything she pleases, and do you know how we do it? Of course you don’t, you imbecile—we do it by praising him for the qualities we want him to have.” She began to laugh. “Remember that next time, Eleanor. This time you’ve lost, and I mean it. Kester is so sick of you he hates remembering you’re alive. You’d better yield with whatever grace you possess.”

She turned and started for the door. Eleanor was holding her hands in the bathrobe pockets, clenched into hard fists. Her fury shook her like a storm. She was thinking, over and over, “If I say anything it will be something dreadful, God help me to keep still.”

At the door Isabel said over her shoulder, “That’s all I’ve got to say to you. I’ll send your clothes up, and see about your car.”

She closed the door behind her. For a moment Eleanor did not move. She could feel her heart pounding. When she finally took her hands out of her pockets and opened them the fingers were so stiff it hurt her to unbend the joints. All her muscles ached with tenseness, but she was glad she had not moved or spoken, for whatever she would have done would have been not a response but an unreasoned expression of rage. There was a knock at the door and she turned sharply, but it was only the Negro maid with her clothes.

The girl explained that she had pressed the dress and underwear with a hot iron and thought they were dry enough to be worn, but the coat was still wet and so were the shoes. Here was a pair of shoes that belonged to Miss Isabel. Eleanor gave brief thanks, and after the girl was gone she got dressed quickly. She put on her own shoes, however, preferring the risk of a cold to wearing Isabel’s. Gathering up her hairpins she went to the bureau.

Her hair was nearly dry. Eleanor braided it hurriedly, and glanced down to be sure she had left none of her hairpins on Isabel’s bureau. A sparkle from something lying near the mirror caught her eye.

She looked at it, and looked again, and her heart resumed its pounding as she reached to pick it up.

It was Kester’s little silver-handled knife. Eleanor turned it over and read his name in tiny letters on the handle. The sight of it made her hot all over, and then cold; it was so like Kester to have left it lying around. Eleanor closed her hand around it, and then opened her fingers and looked at it lying on her palm, and the thought came into her head, “It is very sharp, I could slash her pretty face with it,” and she started, for she had never known before what it felt like to be tempted to physical violence. There was another knock at the door, Eleanor closed her hand again quickly and wheeled around, saying “Yes?” in a voice louder than necessary. The Negro girl entered to say the car had come from Ardeith.

Eleanor held Kester’s knife in her fist. The maid held out the damp coat and Eleanor threw it over her arm. She walked past the girl and went downstairs.

Isabel stood by the open front door, telling Cameo that Mrs. Larne would be down in a minute. As Eleanor reached her Isabel said, “Good night.”

“Good night,” Eleanor answered, and she went out and got into the car, holding her coat on her knees over the fist that held the knife.

The rain was still pouring down. Cameo drove slowly and carefully, and in the back seat Eleanor sat shivering both with cold and with the reaction from her gust of fury. She was weak from her efforts at self-restraint. It was the first time she had ever been savagely angry without giving herself any release whatever, and she had not realized before how exhausting such a struggle could be.

Dilcy and Bessie met her in the hall, full of queries. Dilcy took the wet coat, gave her a pair of slippers she had warmed by the fire, and insisted on bringing supper. Eleanor said she did not want any, but Dilcy urged that she drink a cup of hot milk, and Eleanor consented, more to get rid of their solicitations than because she felt capable of drinking it.

Sitting down by the parlor fire, she looked at the little silver knife in her hand. She had not used it, but she was horrified that she should even have thought of doing so. “Except that this is a silver knife instead of a razor,” she was thinking, “I might as well be a darky in a honky-tonk tent on the levee.” It was appalling to discover how close primitive impulses lay under the surface of civilization. She stared at the knife until she heard Dilcy’s footsteps in the hall, when she started guiltily and thrust it under a magazine lying on the table. As Dilcy bustled in with the milk and a plate of biscuits, the sight of her broad, homely smile gave Eleanor a sense of rescue. Dilcy must know from the telephone call that she had taken refuge from the rain at Isabel’s, but Dilcy could not know what she had been thinking of, and ashamed of her tremors Eleanor smiled back at her, realizing that she was herself foolish with weariness. The day had been a hard one. She wanted a long night’s sleep.

“Now you jes’ drink dis, Miss Elna, and eat a biscuit,” Dilcy was urging, “den you go right up to bed. It sho is a bad night to get caught in.”

“Yes, it is,” Eleanor said. “How are the children?”

“Dey got dere supper and dey’s gone to bed. Don’t you worry ’bout ’em.”

“I don’t.” Eleanor made herself smile again. “You take very good care of them, Dilcy. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Yes ma’am, I tries to do right by my chirren. Now you drink dis milk befo’ it gets cold.”

Eleanor obeyed her, and ate a biscuit too, since it was easier to do so than to protest. Dilcy shepherded her upstairs and helped her undress, for Eleanor was so tired she was hardly capable of getting out of her clothes unaided. Dilcy put a hot water bag at her feet and told her nobody would come near her till she woke up in the morning.

“And maybe you better stay in bed tomorrow,” she went on.

“No, I’ll be all right,” Eleanor murmured. “Thank you, Dilcy.”

“You weccome. Might as well coddle yo’sef, Miss Elna. You don’t do it much.” Dilcy gave her a comforting pat. Eleanor stretched out under the bedclothes. Before Dilcy had put out the light she was asleep.

Chapter Thirteen

1

I
n the morning it was no longer raining, but the ground was so wet that Dilcy would not let Cornelia and Philip go outdoors. She sent them downstairs to play lest they wake their mother. Cornelia and Philip were cross. The weather was gray, the animal cutouts were difficult, and Dilcy could not give help because she was cleaning the nursery. Cornelia stared out of the parlor window disconsolately. Her mother had promised to take her to town today to buy a dress, but with the weather like this it would be just like grown folks to say she could not go.

“Cut out the effalunt,” said Philip, approaching her.

Cornelia thrust out her lip, wishing she had somebody her own age to play with. She was six, and Philip was only a baby not quite four. She was always having to help him to do things he was too little to do himself.

She took the card from him and struggled with the elephant while he watched her anxiously. The elephant’s tusks were complicated and the blunt-pointed scissors not sharp enough to do the job neatly. Unwilling to admit that there was anything a big girl of six could not accomplish, Cornelia went over to the table and turned on the reading-lamp as though in need of more light, while Philip followed her to look on. But the scissors would not do; she needed something with a point. As she paused in perplexity her elbow shoved aside a magazine lying there, and she saw a man’s pocket-knife. Cornelia put down the scissors and picked it up.

“I reckon this would cut the tusks,” she suggested.

“What you got?” Philip inquired.

“Why, it’s father’s knife, the one he’s always using. He must have left it when he went away. I bet he misses it. Mother ought to send it to him.” Philip watched her as she turned the knife in her hands. Cornelia smiled proudly. “I bet you can’t read what this is on the handle.”

Philip shook his head. He could not read anything.

“I can read it,” said Cornelia. “K, e, s, t, e, r. That’s Kester. Kester Larne. When father comes home he won’t know what to make of it, me reading so good. I can cut out the elephant’s tusks with this.”

“Let me do it!” begged Philip.

“No, don’t you try to open this knife. You’re too little. I’ll cut the elephant right.” Cornelia carefully got her finger-nail into the depression at the edge of the blade and drew it out.

“Dat’s got a good point,” Philip said. “I can do it.”

“No, let me! You’re too little. You’ll cut the elephant all up.”

“I want it!” cried Philip. He tried to take it from her.

Cornelia pulled her hand back, but Philip grabbed the knife. She tried to get it from him, loudly demanding respect for her age and superior wisdom. They scuffled, and Cornelia’s foot slipped on the rug. As she fell down she gave a scream that frightened the servants in the kitchen and reached Dilcy in the nursery and pierced the ceiling to wake Eleanor in her room overhead.

2

Eleanor stirred unwillingly, annoyed that the house should not have been kept quiet enough for her to go on sleeping till she felt like waking up. There was such a lot of racket—the children yelling, the servants running about, a door banging down the hall. She might as well have tried to sleep through a football game. One of the children—it sounded like Cornelia—was screaming disgracefully; she ought to be stood in the corner for such behavior, unless she had been really hurt—and Eleanor sat up in bed, her mind suddenly clear enough to realize that what she was hearing was not the yells of a temper fit, but screams of pain. Something dreadful had happened.

She sprang out of bed. The windows were open and the damp air blew sharply through her nightgown. Thrusting her feet into slippers and snatching up her bathrobe Eleanor ran to the stairs. The cries were coming from below.

Dilcy was rushing down ahead of her, and another servant was running up, her dustcloth still in her hand. She nearly collided with Eleanor at the turn.

“It’s Miss Cornelia,” the girl gasped breathlessly. “She fell down.”

Eleanor hurried past her. The parlor was already full of servants who had come running when they heard the screams. Philip was sobbing, evidently scared by all the commotion, and after a glance to make sure he was unhurt Eleanor dropped on her knees by Dilcy, who sat on the floor rocking Cornelia back and forth in her arms and moaning, “Oh, my child! My baby, my po’ li’l lamb!”

Her hands over her face, Cornelia had buried her head on Dilcy’s bosom and was giving muffled little groans. Eleanor reached to take her and Cornelia’s hands slipped down, and as Eleanor’s arms went around the child’s tense little body she heard her own voice come out of her throat with a sound hardly less frantic than Cornelia’s first screams.

“It’s her eyes!” she cried out. “Oh my God, it’s her beautiful eyes!”

There was an instant of silence, broken only by Cornelia’s moans and Philip’s frightened sobs. The Negroes stood frozen. Eleanor stared at the tiny drop of blood creeping from beneath Cornelias left eyelid. For the moment she was as though paralyzed. What had happened she did not know nor had she voice to inquire; she simply sat gazing, her mouth half open and her arms rigid around Cornelia, and her mind stupidly repeating, her eyes, her eyes, her eyes.

Then all of a sudden everybody was moving again. The Negroes were talking, soothing Philip, offering to help Cornelia, asking each other what had happened to her. Cameo bent to pick up something from the floor and Eleanor heard him exclaim, “Why I declare, it’s Mr. Kester’s knife.”

Eleanor jerked up her head. Kester’s knife—the words struck her like an accusation. She remembered leaving it on the table last night, after years of warning the servants never, never to put sharp instruments where the children could reach them. Her face evidently betrayed her horror, for Cameo bent over her.

“You better let me tote her upstairs, miss,” he said. Without waiting for permission he lifted Cornelia and as he stood up he went on sternly. “You Bessie, you get right out and phone Dr. Purcell. Can’t you see de missis got such a shock she can’t do nothin’?”

Eleanor got to her feet. “Thank you, Cameo,” she said faintly, and with a great effort she recalled her stunned intelligence and began to give orders. “Call Dr. Purcell, Bessie. Say Miss Cornelia fell on a knife and it went into her eye. Tell him to come over at once and ask if there’s anything we can do for her before he gets here. Dilcy, take care of the baby. Bring Miss Cornelia up to my room, Cameo. And will the rest of you for heaven’s sake be quiet!”

She followed Cameo upstairs, and when he had laid Cornelia on the bed Eleanor bent over her. Cornelia was whimpering, her hands held over her eyes with such force that it was hard for Eleanor to bring them down. Cornelia writhed under her touch. Both her eyes were shut tight, and Eleanor was surprised that the only evidence of her injury was still no more than that single small drop of blood. Hot packs, Eleanor wondered, or cold packs, or what? She did not know. Bessie came in.

“De doctor say he be right over, miss. He’s leavin’ dis minute.”

Eleanor sprang up. “What can we do for her?”

“He say don’t do a single thing till he gets here.”

“Oh.” Eleanor sat down by the bed again, putting her arm around Cornelia and trying to speak soothingly, but her voice was small with terror. It was several minutes before she realized that Cornelia’s moans had become an articulate plea. She leaned closer to listen. “Yes, darling? What did you say?”

“Tell father to come home,” Cornelia was begging. “I want father.”

Eleanor was holding her, keeping Cornelia’s hands away from her eyes. “All right, dear,” she answered gently. “I’ll get him as soon as I can.”

“Can’t you get him now? Can’t you phone the place where he is?”

“Yes, I’ll phone him. Do you promise not to touch your eyes while I’m phoning?”

Cornelia nodded.

“Very well. I’ll call this minute.”

She released Cornelia and turned to the bedside telephone. Kester was at the government cotton station. Eleanor called the long distance operator and asked for the office.

A switchboard operator answered. Eleanor gave her name and asked for Kester. Mr. Larne had gone out to the experimental field, the operator answered; she would have him return the call when the men came in at noon.

Behind Eleanor’s back Cornelia was asking, “Have you got him? Can I talk to him?”

“Not yet, dear,” said Eleanor, and to the telephone she added, “This is a matter of vital importance. Send for Mr. Larne. I’ll hold the line.”

“Just a minute. I’ll see if I can find him.”

She waited. It was a long time before she heard anything else. But at last Kester’s voice came over the wire.

“Hello? Eleanor?”

It had been two months since she had heard him speak. As his words reached her their sound reminded her of how well she would have known his voice anywhere, even if his silence had lasted twenty years instead of two months. He sounded both surprised and puzzled at her summons. She tried to answer clearly. “Kester, Cornelia has been hurt. She—”

“Cornelia! What did she do? How serious is it?”

“I don’t know yet. It’s her eyes.”

“Good God!”

“She wants to talk to you.”

“When did it happen?”

“Just a few minutes ago.”

“Have you got a doctor?”

“I’ve called Bob Purcell. He isn’t here yet.”

“Bob Purcell? That pill-packer! What does he know about eyes? Take her to New Orleans. I’ll go down right away and have a specialist waiting when you get there. How soon can you leave?”

“As soon as the doctor has seen her.”

“Do you have to wait?”

“He’ll be here any minute, and she’s in a lot of pain.”

She heard Kester give a wordless sound like a shudder made audible. Eleanor fastened her teeth on her lip to steady herself.

“She wants to talk to you, Kester,” she said after an instant. “Cornelia, here’s father.”

She laid the telephone by Cornelia and held the receiver so Cornelia could hear. Kester spoke, but she could not distinguish his words. Cornelia said, “Why can’t you come now? Do I have to go to New Orleans?”

They talked until Eleanor heard Bob Purcell running up the staircase. As he came in she picked up the phone. “Kester, Bob is here. You and Cornelia will have to stop.”

“I’ll drive down to New Orleans this minute,” Kester said quickly. “There’s a train about ten, isn’t there ?—you take that and I’ll meet you at the station.”

“All right.” Eleanor put back the receiver and turned around.

Bob was already bending over Cornelia, who was crying out again, whether in pain or fright Eleanor had no way of knowing.

“I’ve just talked to Kester,” Eleanor said. “He’s on his way to New Orleans to get a specialist. Can you come down with Cornelia and me?”

Bob glanced over his shoulder. “Yes, I’ll be glad to. But first let me take a look at her.” Cornelia shrank away from him and he looked up again. “Eleanor, there’s no time for me to be gentle. She can’t understand that I’ve got to do this. You’ll have to hold her still so I can look into her eyes.”

“Are you going to hurt her?” Eleanor asked, then without waiting for an answer she said, “Very well, I’ll hold her,” and sat on the bed, drew Cornelia’s arms down and held her head rigid. She shut her own eyes and turned her head away. It seemed a long time that she had to sit there, letting Bob be as cruel as he had to be, and when at last she heard him say, “That’s all, you can let her rest now,” Eleanor found that her muscles were painful with tension. Bob picked up Cornelia and laid her down in bed, drawing the covers over her. He had put shields over her eyes and fixed them with a bandage, and she was growing quiet under a sedative. Eleanor looked at her, and reached up to push her own hair off her face. Now that Cornelia was temporarily relieved she was remembering for the first time that she had not so much as washed her face or put a comb to her hair that morning.

“You’re very brave,” said Bob. “Not every mother could have done that so quietly.”

For a moment Eleanor did not reply. She did not feel brave. She felt as if it might have been a relief to faint and have a few minutes of blankness.

“Let me talk to you,” she begged.

“Come in here,” said Bob. They went into the next room. Eleanor asked,

“Bob, what has she done?”

“It’s her left eye,” said Bob. “She has cut the sclera at the margin of the cornea—does that make sense to you?”

Eleanor shook her head.

“The sclera is the white part of the eye. The cornea is the clear window in front of the iris.”

“How dangerous is it?”

He hesitated.

“Bob, I want to know!”

“It’s almost impossible to foretell, Eleanor. Sometimes eyes have astonishing powers of healing. Now if you’ll get dressed and have somebody pack a grip for you, I’ll attend to everything else.”

He smiled with what looked like professional optimism, and added that he was going to order breakfast sent up to her. His gentleness struck her with deeper fear than Cornelia’s screams.

3

Bob engaged a drawing-room on the train, and when Cornelia had been put to bed, still quiet under the sedative he had given her, he sat by Eleanor on the seat near the window. Eleanor looked out at the cypress swamp through which they were passing. It was a cool silver landscape, thick with clouds that now and again broke into showers over the gray trees and their draperies of gray moss. She thought of the day when she and Kester had first driven into a cypress swamp together, and had sat watching the rain while he had shown her beauty where she had never seen it before. That had been during the enchanted winter when she was first beginning to be aware of her love for him. Their love had been so rich and tender once, a love full of splendid possibilities that they had let slip by them unrealized until now the citadel they might have built for their marriage was a pile of ruins and they had to face each other across the body of this tortured child.

She must have trembled visibly, for Bob spoke to her, and it was not until she heard his voice that she realized how silent she had been.

“This isn’t necessarily tragic, Eleanor,” he advised her.