This Side of Glory (29 page)

Kester had not moved as he listened to her. Now as she paused he stirred slightly, moved his head and shoulders, and slowly took one hand from his pocket to reach for the doorknob behind him.

“You are perfectly right,” he said in a low voice. “Forgive me for being a very ungracious guest.”

He went out.

As he started across the hall Eleanor leaned against the side of the doorway, watching him in bitter triumph. Kester opened the door of his own bedroom, went inside and closed it.

Eleanor could hear him moving around, opening doors and pulling out drawers. Suddenly her heart gave several quick little jumps and she caught her hands over it. She had not meant to be quite so cruel. Her words came back to her with their simple and unmistakable implication, which no man of Kester’s nature could have failed to hear. The walls began to totter as she realized that he was acting upon it.

She ran across the hall and flung open the door of his room.

Two suitcases were on the floor, half full of a jumble of shirts and shoes and pajamas. The drawers of his bureau stood open, and he was going back and forth between the bureau and the suitcases, bringing garments and dumping them on the piles. As she came in he glanced up, but he did not pause or speak to her.

“Kester,” she gasped, “where are you going?”

“I really don’t know,” said Kester. He was on his knees putting his toothbrushes into a case.

“I didn’t mean that!” she exclaimed. “I never thought of it!”

“I should have thought of it myself,” Kester returned quietly. “Stupid of me not to have realized that six months is a long time to ask for free lodging.”

Eleanor laced her hands together, moving them till she could hear the little swishing sound of her palms against each other.

“Won’t you forgive me, Kester?” she pled. “I was so angry—I hardly knew what I was talking about. I didn’t mean to say what you thought I did.”

“Would you mind moving so I can get that coat?” asked Kester.

She took a step to one side, mechanically observing that it was just like Kester to have slung his coat over a projecting light-bracket on the wall. He took it down and began folding it.

Eleanor stood where she was, silenced by her utter helplessness against what was happening. Kester went on packing his bags, muddling clothes and shaving-brushes in the most disorderly fashion and putting in shoes where the polish would be sure to smudge his handkerchiefs. She had an impulse to say, “Let me do that, you’ll never find anything when you open those bags,” but she did not say that or anything else; she simply stood there, watching him throw his things together and then close the suitcases. He had stuffed them so hastily that the lids and bottoms would not meet until he had put his knee on the top of each one in turn and strained at the straps. Then he stood up, carrying a suitcase in each hand, and went past her, through the doorway and into the hall.

She came after him. He was about to start down the staircase.

“Kester,” she said, “Kester, I told you I was sorry. My darling—why are you going away?”

He set down the bags. Turning around, he looked at her. He looked her up and down, his face expressionless but for a flicker at the corner of his mouth.

“If you weren’t poor white trash,” he answered slowly and distinctly, “you wouldn’t have to ask.”

He picked up the bags and went down the stairs. Standing with her hands on her throat, which was closing and choking her so that she could not move or speak and could hardly breathe, Eleanor heard the front door closing and then the sound of the gadget-ridden car in the avenue.

Later that night a Negro man brought the car back. Cameo, who answered the doorbell, brought Eleanor a note.

“Sorry I had to borrow your car, but I had the tank filled. Kester.”

Chapter Twelve

1

F
or a week Eleanor heard nothing more from Kester, then she received a note four lines long telling her he was working at the government cotton station up the river. He did not write her again. She could not tell if his silence was a weapon he was deliberately using to hurt her or if he merely had nothing to say.

Eleanor had never been more uncertain or more wretched, for never had she had such a blow to her self-respect. Whether Kester’s hand or her own had been heaviest in dealing it she could not decide. All she knew was that Kester had walked out of Ardeith and she had no way to tell if he had any intention of returning.

At first she could not think. It was like the winter before when she had been so ill that physical discomfort had been like a shell separating everything else from her consciousness, only what enclosed her now was pain of the spirit. She walked around the house, or drove into the country for such distances that she was half hypnotized with the motions of driving. Usually so clear and sure of its purposes, her mind now was muddy with confusion. Kester despised her. He had called her poor white trash. She lay awake at night remembering it, trembling with rage and shame. Long ago Kester had given her his own definition of that term: “No fineness, no delicacy, no knowledge that some things are Caesar’s and some things are God’s.”

She recalled their last dialogue. Her concluding speech to Kester had been intolerable. She had driven a hateful truth into him like a knife, with a power to hurt him that she would not have had if he had not, by loving her, given it to her. But he had plagued her past endurance, she told herself savagely; nobody could remain patient before his habit of substituting charm for a sense of moral obligation.

Over and over she retraced her analysis this far, and stopped. She could go no further because she loved Kester, she loved him for the very levity and glitter that had driven her to exasperation, and she wanted nothing in the world but to have him back.

She wrote him a letter beginning, “The children ask for you a dozen times a day,” and then tore it up. It was true, the children did ask for him, but that was a bludgeon she would scorn herself for using and he would scorn her for attempting it. She pacified Cornelia and Philip by telling them their father would be back soon. To other inquiries she said Kester was at the cotton station upriver, and said it so crisply that before long she was receiving no more questions. With a fierce desire for privacy, she went about as usual, willing to discuss any subject on earth but her personal life.

Then, vaguely and tormentingly, she began to be aware that her affairs were not private. At first the rumor was like a cobweb that one brushes away on a dark street, not sure whether one has encountered a cobweb or a trick of the shadows. But though she tried to believe it was a figment of her strained imagination she began to feel like a schoolgirl suspecting that everybody but herself was sharing a secret.

She went into the drug store and saw Clara and Cousin Sylvia talking in undertones to each other over glasses of Coca-Cola. As she approached the table they stopped abruptly, and said, “Why hello, Eleanor!” with exaggerated cordiality. Clara added, “Won’t you sit down?”

Eleanor said no, she was in a hurry. While she was buying a jar of cold cream and a brush for Philip’s hair—he had goldenish curls that were shamefully wasted on a boy—she heard Sylvia make a carefully indifferent remark about the weather. Eleanor glanced around, wondering why Sylvia should wear ruffles around her scrawny neck, trying to look young when she so obviously wasn’t, and Sylvia moved her eyes away a fraction of a second too late to conceal from Eleanor that they had been on her.

When she reached home she went to the kitchen to give an order about the children’s supper. Dilcy and Bessie were talking, and through the half-open door Eleanor heard Dilcy exclaim, “Why, it ain’t
so!”
and Bessie retorted, “Well, dat’s what dey’s sayin’.” As Eleanor entered they both turned sharply, saying “Yes
ma’am?”
with an excess of deference, and looking as if they might have blushed had they been white.

Eleanor had promised to go to a tea at Silverwood the following Sunday afternoon, in honor of Clara’s sister, Mrs. Meynard, who was coming down from Baton Rouge on a visit. The tea was placidly uninteresting until during a lull in the conversation Mrs. Meynard asked innocently, “What’s Isabel Valcour doing these days? Is she still in town?” Clara answered hastily, “Oh yes, she’s still in town,” and as she said it her face pinkened and she began urging Violet to play the piano. Two or three others joined, fluttering as though to cover the embarrassment of a guest who had upset the gravy on the tablecloth. Violet complied with a coolness that was in itself a rebuke to them, while Eleanor sat nibbling wafers and feeling as conspicuous as a flagpole. But she blessed Violet’s self-possession. Violet was a practical woman who took no pleasure in minding other people’s business.

These occurrences were too frequent for her to overlook them; all she could do for the sake of her own dignity was pretend not to notice them. The chatter was all around her, in kitchen and parlor alike. She heard it and she did not hear it. Nobody told her anything, yet from everybody she learned something. Isabel was never invited anywhere Eleanor went and except for that slip at Clara’s Eleanor never heard a mention of her name. Several of Eleanor’s acquaintances began to be officiously kind. It drove her to fury. The whole business made her feel that an indecent advantage was being taken of her, as she might have felt had she seen the neighbors examining her clothesline in an attempt to discover how often she changed her underwear.

The fact that she was helpless drove her to bravado. She continued to go out, greeting her friends on the street and accepting invitations with offhand pleasantness. She gave a party for the children, she invited people to dinner, she went to entertainments and was very gay when she got there, and bought more clothes than ever before in a single season. When she was alone she paced the floor of her room till she thought she must have trodden miles across the rug, blaming herself, blaming Kester, hating Isabel; but her one aim in life had become that of not giving anybody a chance to guess what she was bearing. She walked through the halls and looked up at the pictured faces of her predecessors at Ardeith. Her eyes searching these women who had married men named Larne—women in Colonial powder, Napoleonic high waistline, balloon sleeves of the eighteen-thirties, Civil War hoop-skirt—she wondered what they had in common and what lay behind their painted dignity. Happiness, disappointment, secure joy or desperate grief—they could not all have experienced the same destiny, but one thing she was sure they had shared, the power of endurance. They would have turned nothing but serenity to the artists who painted them, holding their conviction that a lady wore an enigmatic smile above her personal life. They were part of a great tradition. Eleanor had never thought much about that until now, but now she thought of it and understood it. They bore pain bravely because they could bear pain more easily than pity, knowing that pity was very close to contempt.

2

Late one morning during the first week of December Cousin Sylvia made Eleanor a visit. Eleanor was surprised when Cameo summoned her to the parlor, for the day was raw and gloomy with mist, hardly a time to be chosen for a round of ceremonious calls. Her knowledge of Sylvia suggested that it was more likely to have been chosen as a day when one could be sure of finding the object of one’s efforts alone by her own fire, and as she descended the stairs Eleanor was buckling on an armor of unconcern against the pricks of Sylvia’s lance. She entered the parlor smiling brightly.

“Why Cousin Sylvia, how good of you to drop in! And in this doleful weather, too.”

“I’ve been
so
wanting to see you, Eleanor dear.” Sylvia clasped Eleanor’s hand ardently.

Wondering why anybody of Sylvia’s age and disposition should think an over-use of rouge would cover the querulous lines in her cheeks, Eleanor exclaimed, “Your hands are cold. I’m sure you’d like a hot cup of coffee, wouldn’t you?”

“How nice of you,” said Sylvia.

Eleanor continued to be nice. She took Sylvia’s coat, talking pleasantly while she made uncomplimentary mental remarks upon her visitor’s girlish frock and floriated hat—Eleanor would have considered them both too juvenile for herself, though she was about twenty years younger than Sylvia—and settled Sylvia comfortably in an armchair by the hearth. Cameo brought coffee. “Now we can have a good long chat,” Eleanor said as she filled the cups.

Sylvia smiled gently. “Yes, a good long chat. Bad weather makes a fireside so comforting, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, doesn’t it?” Eleanor agreed.

“Your poinsettias are especially pretty this year. I noticed them as I drove up.”

“Thank you so much,” said Eleanor.

For a few minutes they sipped coffee and discussed poinsettias. After awhile Sylvia remarked that everyone’s garden would be full of weeds after this wet spell. “But you don’t work your own flowers, do you?” She asked.

“No, I have a man for that.”

“Gardening is such healthful exercise,” Sylvia reminded her. “You should really take it up. The air and the beautiful sunshine, they make one’s troubles seem small,” she said invitingly, but as she got no response she edged her chair an inch nearer to ask, “How have you been amusing yourself lately?”

“Why, I’ve had a great deal to do, getting the children’s winter clothes in order and making my Christmas list, and I’ve taken advantage of the dull weather to catch up on my correspondence.”

“You write a great many letters?” Sylvia inquired.

“I have five brothers and sisters, you know,” Eleanor returned blandly, “and there are my parents, besides all my old friends.” And if you’re trying to find out whether or not I’ve been writing to Kester, she added in her mind, you’re going to be disappointed.

But Sylvia was not so easily disappointed. “You don’t find it lonesome out here on the plantation?” she asked innocently.

“Lonesome? Why no. With two small children and a household as large as this, one doesn’t get much chance for solitude.”

“But that’s hardly companionship,” suggested Sylvia.

“Why Cousin Sylvia, I get the most delightful companionship in the world from my children.”

As that remark was blameless Sylvia rested a moment, while Eleanor, watching her across the coffee-pot, wondered how long it was going to take her to come to the direct questions Sylvia was evidently yearning to have answered. “My dear,” murmured Sylvia, “I have been thinking of you a great deal recently.”

“How kind of you,” said Eleanor.

Sylvia drank the last coffee in her cup. “Yes, my dear, I have. You aren’t looking well. Are you feeling quite yourself, Eleanor?”

“I’m perfectly well, thank you.”

“There are aches of the heart,” Sylvia said darkly.

“Let me give you some coffee,” said Eleanor. She refilled Sylvia’s cup and her own.

Sylvia looked around the room and then at Eleanor again. “I have wanted to come to see you before, dear child,” she continued. “But I have put it off. Sometimes one’s duty is not clear. It is difficult to bring up unpleasant problems, even from the loftiest of motives. And yet, I am convinced I should speak to you. For your own good, Eleanor.”

Eleanor silently observed that Sylvia would have loved to be a dentist and say gloatingly, “Now this
may
hurt a little.”

Sylvia was talking on in her gentle whiny monotone. She toyed with her subject, drew it around and around. Eleanor listened, pretending a sweet impassivity while inwardly she burned with resentment.

“We were so happy when you and Kester were married,” Sylvia informed her at length. “And yet—I am sure you never suspected this and I would be the last to tell you except that the time has come when it seems right to speak frankly—there was some surprise.”

“Was there?”

“Indeed yes, my dear. Of course you are startled. You are a lovely, well-educated girl, and your people are most
deserving,
your father merits a great deal of credit for his honorable career, with so few opportunities as he has had, we are proud to know our country gives a chance to men like that, that’s what America is for, isn’t it?”

“Do you think so?” Eleanor asked fatuously.

“Yes, it is good to know we have no classes in this happy land. But there was astonishment, I shan’t deny, when Kester stepped outside his own circle—not that I mean to imply he hadn’t a perfect right to do so, but you and he had not been brought up alike, you must admit.”

“I’ve never thought of not admitting it,” said Eleanor.

“Certainly, my dear, everyone thought it so courageous of you to have no false pride. And I think I should tell you, lest you misunderstand my making this plain, that I championed you from the very
beginning.”

“Did you?”

“I certainly did, Eleanor. When Miss Agatha Durham said to me—such fine girls the Durhams are, devoted to good works, but a bit conservative—when Miss Agatha said to me, ‘But what is this girl’s
background?’
—I said right out to her, ‘Now Miss Agatha, I am sure Kester Larne would not have married anyone whose antecedents were not unquestionable, and just because we don’t know so much about the Upjohns as we do about some other families does not indicate that they aren’t very
worthy
people, and anyway,’ I said, ‘this is a
Christian
country,’ and I was happy to observe that the Durham girls called the next day, the very next day.”

“How obliging of you,” said Eleanor.

“My dear, with all my faults nobody can say I have not always tried to do my duty. And I’m sure your forebears were quite flawless, were they not, Eleanor?”

Eleanor smiled upon her with all politeness. “In my home, Cousin Sylvia, we gave very little attention to the dead except to see that they were properly buried.”

“Ah,” murmured Sylvia. But though baffled, she was not silenced. She pursued her subject. “I have told you all this, Eleanor dear, not to hurt you—I should be very sad if I thought I had hurt you—but to make you understand that there has been certain, ah, unkind gossip of late.” She waited for Eleanor’s reaction, but as Eleanor showed none Sylvia went on. “Oh my dear, if you knew how it pains me to tell you!—for there have been those malicious enough to say that a man cannot be condemned for returning to his own people. How
can
anyone be so cruel? How can anyone have such foolish, hurtful interest in the concerns of others, talking, tattling, injuring—” She paused dramatically.