It had been arranged that for the two nights before the funeral Agnes was to sleep in the front bedroom, on one side of Cousin Hetty's room, and Marise in the small hall bedroom on the other side, the same room and the same bed in which she had slept as a little girl. Nothing had been changed there, since those days. The same heavy white pitcher and basin stood in the old wash-stand with the sunken top and hinged cover; the same oval white soap-dish, the same ornamental spatter-work frame in dark walnut hung over the narrow walnut bedstead.
As she undressed in the space between the bed and the wash-stand, the past came up before her in a sudden splashing wave of recollection which for a moment engulfed her. It had all been a dream, all that had happened since then, and she was again eight years old, with nothing in the world but bad dreams to fear, and Cousin Hetty there at hand as a refuge even against bad dreams. How many times she had wakened, terrified, her heart beating hammer-strokes against her ribs, and trotted shivering, in her night-gown, into Cousin Hetty's room.
"Cousin Hetty! Cousin Hetty!"
"What? What's that? Oh, you, Marise. What's the matter? Notions again?"
"Oh, Cousin Hetty, it was an awful dream this time. Can't I get into bed with you?"
"Why yes, come along, you silly child."
The fumbling approach to the bed, the sheets held open, the kind old hand outstretched, and then the haven . . . her head on the same pillow with that of the brave old woman who was afraid of nothing, who drew her up close and safe and with comforting assurance instantly fell asleep again. And then the delicious, slow fading of the terrors before the obliterating hand of sleep, the delicious slow sinking into forgetfulness of everything.
Standing there, clad in the splendor of her physical maturity, Marise shivered uncontrollably again, and quaked and feared. It was all a bad dream, all of it, and now as then Cousin Hetty lay safe and quiet, wrapped in sleep which was the only escape. Marise turned sick with longing to go again, now, to seek out Cousin Hetty and to lie down by her to share that safe and cold and dreamless quiet.
She flung back over her shoulder the long shining dark braid which her fingers had been automatically twisting, and stood for a moment motionless. She was suffering acutely, but the pain came from a source so deep, so confused, so inarticulate, that she could not name it, could not bring to bear on it any of the resources of her intelligence and will. She could only bend under it as under a crushing burden, and suffer as an animal endures pain, dumbly, stupidly.
After a time a small knock sounded, and Agnes's voice asked through the door if Miss Marise thought the door to . . . to . . . if the "other" door ought to be open or shut. It was shut now. What did people do as a general thing?
Marise opened her own door and looked down on the old figure in the straight, yellowed night-gown, the knotted, big-veined hand shielding the candle from the wandering summer breeze which blew an occasional silent, fragrant breath in from the open windows.
"I don't know what people do as a rule," she answered, and then asked, "How did Miss Hetty like best to have it, herself?"
"Oh, open, always."
"We'd better open it, then."
The old servant swayed before the closed door, the candlestick shaking in her hand. She looked up at Marise timidly. "You do it," she said under her breath.
Marise felt a faint pitying scorn, stepped past Agnes, lifted the latch, and opened the door wide into the blackness of the other room.
The dense silence seemed to come out, coldly and softly. For Marise it had the sweetness of a longed-for anaesthetic, it had the very odor of the dreamless quiet into which she longed to sink. But Agnes shrank away, drew hastily closer to Marise, and whispered in a sudden panic, "Oh, don't it scare you? Aren't you afraid to be here all alone, just you and me? We'd ought to have had a man stay too."
Marise tried to answer simply and kindly, "No, I'm not afraid. It is only all that is left of dear Cousin Hetty." But the impatience and contemptuous surprise which she kept out of her words and voice were felt none the less by the old woman. She drooped submissively as under a reproach. "I know it's foolish," she murmured, "I know it's foolish."
She began again to weep, the tears filling her faded eyes and running quietly down her wrinkled old cheeks. "You don't know how gone I feel without her!" she mourned. "I'd always had her to tell me what to do. Thirty-five years now, every day, she's been here to tell me what to do. I can't make it seem true, that it's her lying in there. Seems as though every minute she'd come in, stepping quick, the way she did. And I fairly open my mouth to ask her, 'Now Miss Hetty, what shall I do next?' and then it all comes over me."
Marise's impatience and scorn were flooded by an immense sympathy. What a pitiable thing a dependent is! Poor old Agnes! She leaned down to the humble, docile old face, and put her cheek against it. "I'll do my best to take Cousin Hetty's place for you," she said gently, and then, "Now you'd better go back to bed. There's a hard day ahead of us."
Agnes responded with relief to the tone of authority. She said with a reassured accent, "Well, it's all right if you're not afraid," turned and shuffled down the hall, comforted and obedient.
Marise saw her go into her room, heard the creak of the bed as she lay down on it, and then the old voice, "Miss Marise, will it be all right if I leave my candle burning, just this once?"
"Yes, yes, Agnes, that'll be all right," she answered. "Go to sleep now." As she went back into her own room, she thought passingly to herself, "Strange that anyone can live so long and grow up so little."
She herself opened her bed, lay down on it resolutely, and blew out her candle.
Instantly the room seemed suffocatingly full of a thousand flying, disconnected pictures. The talk with Agnes had changed her mood. The dull, leaden weight of that numbing burden of inarticulate pain was broken into innumerable fragments. For a time, before she could collect herself to self-control, her thoughts whirled and roared in her head like a machine disconnected from its work, racing furiously till it threatens to shake itself to pieces. Everything seemed to come at once.
Frank Warner was dead. What would that mean to Nelly Powers?
Had there been enough bread left in the house till someone could drive the Ford to Ashley and buy some more?
Ought she to wear mourning for Cousin Hetty?
What had happened on the Eagle Rocks? Had Frank and 'Gene quarreled, or had 'Gene crept up behind Frank as he sighted along the compass?
How would they get Cousin Hetty's friends from the station at Ashley, out to the house, such feeble old people as they were? It would be better to have the services all at the church.
Had anything been decided about hymns? Someone had said something about it, but what had she . . . oh, of course that had been the moment when Touclé had come in, and Mr. Bayweather had rushed away to tell Frank's mother. Frank's mother. His mother! Suppose that were to happen to Mark, or Paul? No, not such thoughts. They mustn't be let in at all, or you went mad.
Was it true that Elly cared nothing about her, that children didn't, for grown-ups, that she was nothing in Elly's life?
She was glad that Touclé had come back. There would be someone to help Neale with the children. . . .
Neale . . . the name brought her up abruptly. Her mind, hurrying, breathless, panting, was stopped by the name, as by a great rock in the path. There was an instant of blankness, as she faced it, as though it were a name she did not know. When she said that name, everything stopped going around in her head. She moved restlessly in her bed.
And then, as though she had gone around the rock, the rapid, pattering, painful rush of those incoherent ideas began again. Queer that nobody there, Mr. Bayweather, Agnes, Touclé, none of them seemed to realize that Frank had not fallen, that 'Gene had . . . but of course she remembered they hadn't any idea of a possible connection between Frank and the Powers, and she had been the only one to see 'Gene in that terrible flight from the Rocks. Nelly had thought he had been cultivating corn all day. Of course nobody would think of anything but an accident. Nobody would ever know.
Yes, it was true; it was true that she would touch Neale and never know it, never feel it . . . how closely that had been observed, that she could take a handkerchief from his pocket as from a piece of furniture. It was true that Neale and she knew each other now till there was no hidden corner, no mystery, no possibility of a single unexpected thing between them. She had not realized it, but it was true. How could she not have seen that his presence left her wholly unmoved, indifferent now? But how could she have known it, so gradual had been the coming of satiety, until she had to contrast with it this fierce burning response to a fierce and new emotion? . . .
Had she thought "indifference"? and "satiety"? Of whom had she been thinking? Not of Neale! Was that what had come of the great hour on Rocca di Papa? Was that what human beings were?
She had gone further this time, but now she was brought up short by the same blankness at the name of Neale, the same impossibility to think at all. She could not think about Neale tonight. All that must be put off till she was more like herself, till she was more steady. She was reeling now, with shock after shock; Cousin Hetty's death, 'Gene's dreadful secret, the discovery no longer to be evaded of what Vincent Marsh meant and was. . . .
She felt a sudden hurried impatient haste to be with Vincent again, to feel again the choking throb when she first saw him, the constant scared uncertainty of what he might say, what she might feel, what they both might do, from one moment to the next . . . she could forget, in those fiery and potent draughts, everything, all this that was so hard and painful and that she could not understand and that was such a torment to try to understand. Everything would be swept away except . . .
As though she had whirled suddenly about to see what was lurking there behind her, she whirled about and found the thought, "But I ought to tell someone, tell the police, that I saw 'Gene Powers running away after he had killed the man who wanted to take his wife from him."
Instantly there spoke out a bitter voice, "No, I shall tell no one. 'Gene has known how to keep Nelly. Let him have her for all his life."
Another voice answered, "Frank's mother . . . his mother!"
And both of these were drowned by a tide of sickness as the recollection came upon her of that dreadful haste, those horrible labored breaths.
She sat up with a great sweeping gesture of her arms, as though she must fight for air. The little room seemed palpably crammed with those jostling, shouting, battling thoughts. She slid from the bed and went to the window, leaning far out from it, and looking up at the sky, immeasurably high and black, studded thick with stars.
They looked down disdainfully at her fever and misery. A chilling consolation fell from them upon her, like a cold dew. She felt herself shrink to imperceptible proportions. What did they matter, the struggles of the maggots who crawled about the folds of the globe, itself the most trifling and insignificant of all the countless worlds which people the aimless disorder of the universe? What difference did it make? Anything they did was so soon indistinguishable from anything else. The easiest way . . . to yield to whatever had the strongest present force . . . that was as good as any other way in the great and blind confusion of it all.
After she had gone back to bed, she could still see the silent multitude of stars above her, enormous, remote beyond imagination, and it was under their thin, cold, indifferent gaze that she finally fell asleep.
CHAPTER XXII
EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN
Agnes brought upstairs an armful of white roses. "The lady that visits at your house, she brought them from your garden and she wants to see you if she can."
Eugenia of course. That was unexpected. She must have made an effort to do that, she who hated sickness and death and all dark things.
"Yes, tell her I will be down in a moment. Take her in a glass of cold water, too, will you please, Agnes. The walk over here must have been terribly hot for her."
The roses showed that. They were warm to the touch and as she looked at them intently, at their white clear faces, familiar to her as those of human beings, bent on her with a mute message from the garden, she saw they had begun to droop imperceptibly, that the close, fine texture of their petals had begun ever so slightly to wither. She sprinkled them, put their stems deep into water and went downstairs, wiping her moist hands on her handkerchief.
Eugenia in mauve organdie stood up from the deep Windsor chair where she had sunk down, and came forward silently to greet her. They kissed each other ceremoniously in token of the fact that a death lay between them and the last time they had met . . . was it only yesterday morning?
"Were you able to sleep at all, Marise? You look shockingly tired."
"Oh yes, thanks. I slept well enough. Are the children all right?"
Eugenia nodded, "Yes, as usual."
"Did their father tell them the news of Cousin Hetty's death? How did they take it? Elly perhaps was . . ."
Eugenia did not know about this, had not happened to hear anybody say. But old Touclé was back, at least, to do the work.
"I knew she must be," said Marise. "She was here last night. It was she, you know, who found Frank Warner's body at the foot of . . . of course you've heard of that?"
Eugenia made a little wry face. Of course she had heard of that, she said with an accent of distaste. Everybody was talking about the melodramatic accident, as probably they would still be talking about it a hundred years from now, up here where nothing happened. People had come all the way from North Ashley to look at the place, and some of the men and boys had gone around up to the top of the Eagle Rocks to see where Frank had lost his footing. They found his surveyor's compass still set upon its staff. It was where the line ran very near the edge and Frank must have stepped over the cliff as he was sighting along it. They could see torn leaves and stripped twigs as though he had tried to save himself as he fell.
She stopped speaking. Marise found herself too sick and shaken to venture any comment. There was rather a long silence, such as was natural and suitable under the circumstances, in that house. Presently Marise broke this to ask if anyone knew how Frank's mother had taken the news, although she knew of course Eugenia was the last person of whom to ask such a question. As she expected, Eugenia had only lifted eyebrows, a faint slow shake of her head and a small graceful shrug of her shoulders, her usual formula for conveying her ignorance of common facts, and her indifference to that ignorance.
But Marise, looking at her, as they sat opposite each other in the twilight of the closely shuttered room, was struck by the fact that Eugenia did not seem wholly like herself. Her outward aspect was the same, the usual exquisite exactitude of detail, every blond hair shining and in its place, the flawless perfection of her flesh as miraculous as ever, her tiny white shoe untouched by dust through which she must have walked to reach the house. But there was something . . . in her eyes, perhaps . . . which now looked back at Marise with an expression which Marise did not understand or recognize. If it had not been impossible to think it of Eugenia, Marise would have imagined that her eyes looked troubled, excited. Was it possible that even in her safe ivory tower of aloofness from life, she had felt the jarring blow of the brutally immediate tragedy of the Eagle Rocks? Or perhaps even Cousin Hetty's disappearance . . . she had always hated reminders of death.
As Marise, surprised, looked at her and wondered thus passingly if she felt any reverberation from the tragedy-laden air about them, Eugenia's face hardened back into its usual smooth calm; over the eyes that had been for an instant transparent and alive with troubled brightness, slid their acquired expression of benignant indifference. She answered Marise's faintly inquiring gaze by getting up as if to go, remarking in a clear low tone (she was the only person who had come into the house who had not succumbed to that foolish, instinctive muffling of the voice), "I forgot to give you a message from Neale. He is obliged to be away today, on business, something about a deed to some wood-land."
Marise was slightly surprised. "Where is he going?" she asked. "In the Ford? On the train?" How little she had thought about the mill of late, that she should be so entirely blank as to this business trip.
"Oh, I didn't even try to understand," said Eugenia, smoothing the shining silk of her parasol. "Business finds no echo in me, you know. A man came to supper last night, unexpectedly, and they talked interminably about some deal, lumbering, lines, surveys, deeds . . . till Touclé came in with the news of the accident. The man was from New Hampshire, with that droll, flat New Hampshire accent. You know how they talk, 'bahn' and 'yahd' for barn and yard."
The words "New Hampshire" and "deeds" stirred a disagreeable association of ideas in Marise's mind. The shyster lawyer who had done the Powers out of their inheritance had come from New Hampshire. However, she supposed there were other people in the state besides dishonest lawyers.
Eugenia went on casually. "It seemed quite important. Neale was absorbed by it. He told me afterward, Neale did, that the man had acted as agent for him some years ago in securing a big tract of wood-land around here, something that had been hard to get hold of."
Marise was startled and showed it by a quick lift of her head. She had never known Neale to employ an agent. She looked hard at Eugenia's quiet, indifferent face. The other seemed not to notice her surprise, and returned her look with a long clear gaze, which apparently referred to her hair, for she now remarked in just the tone she had used for the news about Neale, "That way of arranging your coiffure is singularly becoming to you. Mr. Marsh was speaking about it the other day, but I hadn't specially noticed it. He's right. It gives you that swathed close-coifed Leonardo da Vinci look." She put her handkerchief into a small bag of mauve linen, embroidered with white and pale-green crewels, and took up her parasol.
Marise felt something menacing in the air. Eugenia frightened her a little with that glass-smooth look of hers. The best thing to do was to let her go without another word. And yet she heard her voice asking, urgently, peremptorily, "What was the name of the man from New Hampshire?"
Eugenia said, "What man from New Hampshire?" and then, under Marise's silent gaze, corrected herself and changed her tone. "Oh yes, let me see: Neale introduced him, of course. Why, some not uncommon name, and yet not like Smith or Jones. It began with an L, I believe."
Marise said to herself, "I will not say another word about this," and aloud she said roughly, brusquely, "It wasn't Lowder, of course."
"Yes, yes," said Eugenia, "you're right. It was Lowder. I thought it was probably something you'd know about. Neale always tells you everything."
She looked away and remarked, "I suppose you will inherit the furniture of this house? There are nice bits. This Windsor chair; and I thought I saw a Chippendale buffet in the dining-room."
Marise, immobile in her chair, repeated, "It wasn't Lowder. You didn't say it was Lowder."
"Yes, it was Lowder," said Eugenia clearly. "And now you speak of it once more, I remember one more thing about their talk although I didn't try to understand much of it. It was all connected with the Powers family. It was their woodlot which this Mr. Lowder had bought for Neale. I was surprised to know that they had ever had any wood-land. They have always seemed too sordidly poverty-stricken. But it seems this was the only way Neale could get hold of it, because they refused to sell otherwise."
She looked again at Marise, a long, steady, and entirely opaque gaze which Marise returned mutely, incapable of uttering a word. She had the feeling of leaning with all her weight against an inner-door that must be kept shut.
"Did Neale tell you this man had secured the Powers woodlot for him, for Neale, for our mill?" she heard her voice asking, faint in the distance, far off from where she had flung herself against that door.
"Why yes, why not? Not very recently he said, some time ago. We had quite a talk about it afterwards. It must be something you've forgotten," said Eugenia. She took up a card from the table and fanned herself as she spoke, her eyes not quitting Marise's face. "It's going to be as hot as it was yesterday," she said with resignation. "Doesn't it make you long for a dusky, high-ceilinged Roman room with a cool, red-tiled floor, and somebody out in the street shouting through your closed shutters, 'Ricotta! Ricotta!'" she asked lightly.
Marise looked at her blankly. She wished she could lean forward and touch Eugenia to make sure she was really standing there. What was it she had been saying? She could not have understood a word of it. It was impossible that it should be what it seemed to mean,—impossible!
A door somewhere in the house opened and shut, and steps approached. The two women turned their eyes towards the hall-door. Old Mrs. Powers walked in unceremoniously, her gingham dress dusty, her lean face deeply flushed by the heat, a tin pan in her hands, covered with a blue-and-white checked cloth.
"I thought maybe you'd relish some fresh doughnuts as well as anything," she said briskly, with no preliminary of greeting.
Something about the atmosphere of the room struck her oddly for all the composed faces and quiet postures of the two occupants. She brought out as near an apology for intruding, as her phraseless upbringing would permit her. "I didn't see Agnes in the kitchen as I come through, so I come right along, to find somebody," she said, a little abashed.
Marise was incapable of speaking to her, but she made a silent gesture of thanks, and, moving forward, took the pan from the older woman's hand.
Mrs. Powers went on, "If 'twouldn't bother you, could you put them in your jar now, and let me take the pan back with me? We hain't got any too many dishes, you know."
Marise went out to the pantry with the older woman, feeling with astonishment the floor hard and firm under her feet as usual, the walls upright about her. Only something at the back of her throat contracted to a knot, relaxed, contracted, with a singular, disagreeable, involuntary regularity.
"You look down sick, Mis' Crittenden," said Mrs. Powers with a respectful admiration for the suitability of this appearance. "And there ain't nothing surprising that you should. Did you ever see anybody go off more sudden than Miss Hetty? Such a good woman she was, too. It must ha' gi'n you an awful turn." She poured the doughnuts into the jar and, folding the checked cloth, went on, "But I look at it this way. 'Twas a quick end, and a peaceful end without no pain. And if you'd seen as many old people drag along for years, as I have, stranglin' and chokin' and half-dead, why, you'd feel to be thankful Miss Hetty was spared that. And you too!"
"Marise," said Eugenia, coming to the pantry door, "your neighbors wanted me, of course, to bring you all their sympathetic condolence. Mr. Welles asked me to tell you that he would send all the flowers in his garden to the church for the service tomorrow. And Mr. Marsh was very anxious to see you today, to arrange about the use of his car in meeting the people who may come on the train tomorrow, to attend the funeral. He said he would run over here any time today, if you would send Agnes to tell him when you would see him. He said he wouldn't leave the house all day, to be ready to come at any time you would let him."
Mrs. Powers was filled with satisfaction at such conduct. "Now that's what I call real neighborly," she said. "And both on 'em new to our ways too. That Mr. Welles is a real nice old man, anyhow. . . . There! I call him 'old' and I bet he's younger than I be. He acts so kind o' settled down to stay. But Mr. Marsh don't act so. That's the kind man I like to see, up-and-coming, so you never know what he's a-goin' to do next."
Eugenia waited through this, for some answer, and still waited persistently, her eyes on Marise's face.
Marise aroused herself. She must make some comment, of course. "Please thank them both very much," she said finally, and turned away to set the jar on a shelf.
"Well, you goin'?" said Mrs. Powers, behind her, evidently to Eugenia. "Well, good-bye, see you at the funeral tomorrow, I s'pose."
Marise looked around and caught a silent, graceful salutation of farewell from Eugenia, who disappeared down the hall, the front door closing gently behind her.
Mrs. Powers began again abruptly, "Folks is sayin' that Frank Warner must ha' been drinking, but I don't believe it. He wa'n't no drinker. And where'd he git it, if he was? It was heedless, that's what it was. He always was a heedless critter from a little boy up. He was the one that skated right ahead into the hole and most drowned him, and he was fooling with his gran'father's shot-gun when it went off and most blew him to pieces. 'S a wonder he lived to grow up: he come so nigh breaking his neck, before this."
Marise was surprised to hear Eugenia's voice again, "Marise, I stepped back to ask you if there are any errands I could do for you, any messages to take. I pass by the door of Mr. Welles' house. I could perfectly easily stop there and tell Mr. Marsh he could see you now, for instance."
Marise seemed to see her from afar. She heard what she said, but she was aware of it only as an interruption. There was a question she must ask old Mrs. Powers. How could she think of anything else till that had been answered? She said to Eugenia at random, using the first phrase that came into her mind, "No, no. Later. Some other time."
Eugenia hesitated, took a step away from the door, and then came back in, deliberately, close to Marise. She spoke to her in Italian, very clearly, "He is not a man who will wait."
To this Marise, wholly engrossed in her inner struggle, opposed a stupid blankness, an incapacity to think of what Eugenia was saying, long enough to understand it. In that dark inner room, where she kept the door shut against the horror that was trying to come in, she dared not for an instant look away. She merely shook her head and motioned impatiently with her hand. Why did not Eugenia go away?
And yet when Eugenia had gone, she could not bring the words out because of that strange contraction of her throat.
"My! but you ought to go and lie down," said Mrs. Powers compassionately. "You're as white as a sheet. Why don't you just give up for a while? Agnes and I'll tend to things."
Marise was filled with terror at the idea of not getting her answer, and spoke quickly, abruptly. "Mrs. Powers, you never heard, did you, you never thought, in that trouble about losing your wood-land . . . nobody ever thought that Mr. Lowder was only an agent for someone else, whose name wasn't to be known then."
"Oh sure," said Mrs. Powers readily. "'Gene found out from a man that had lived in his town in New Hampshire that Lowder didn't do no lumbering of his own. He just makes a business of dirty deals like that for pay. He always surmised it to be some lumber-company; somebody that runs a mill. Lots of men that run mills do that sort of thing, darn 'em!"
Marise leaned against the pantry shelf. The old woman glanced at her face, gave a cry, and pushed her into a chair, running for water. At the sound, Agnes came trotting, and showed a scared rabbit-like face. "She's just beat out with the shock of Miss Hetty's going off so sudden," explained Mrs. Powers to Agnes.
Marise got to her feet angrily. She had entirely forgotten that Cousin Hetty was dead, or that she was in her house. She was shocked that for a moment she had relaxed her steady pressure against that opening door. She flung herself against it now. What could she do next?
Instantly, clearly, as though she had heard someone saying it to her, she thought, "Why, of course, all I have to do is to go and ask Neale about it!"
It was so simple. Somehow, of course, Neale could give the answer she must have. Why had she not thought of that the instant Eugenia had begun to speak?
She drank the glass of water Agnes gave her and said, "Mrs. Powers, could you do something for me? I promised I would stay here till the funeral and I know Agnes is afraid to stay alone. Would you mind waiting here for perhaps half an hour till I could get to the mill and back? There is something important I must see to."
Mrs. Powers hesitated. "Well now, Mis' Crittenden, there ain't nothing I wouldn't do for you. But I'm kind o' funny about dead folks. I don't believe I'd be much good to Agnes because I feel just the way she does. But I'll run over to the house and get Nelly and 'Gene to come. I guess the four of us together won't be nervous about staying. 'Gene ain't workin' today. He got a sunstroke or something yesterday, in the sun, cultivatin' his corn and he don't feel just right in his head, he says."
She went out of the door as she spoke, calling over her shoulder, "I wun't be gone long."
Marise sat down again, there in the pantry, leaned her head against the door and looked steadily at the shelves before her, full of dishes and jars and bottles and empty jelly glasses. In her mind there was only one thing, a fixed resolve not to think at all, of anything, until she had been to Neale's office and had Neale explain it to her. Surely he would not have started on that trip whatever it was. It was so early still. She must not think about it at all, until she had asked Neale. Eugenia had probably made a mistake about the name. Even if Neale had gone she would be able to ask about the name and find that Eugenia had made a mistake. That would make everything all right. Of course Eugenia had made a mistake about the name.
She was still staring fixedly at the shelves, frowning and beginning again to count all the things on them, when Mrs. Powers' voice sounded from the kitchen. "I met 'em on the way is why I'm back so soon," she explained to Agnes. "Nelly had some flowers to bring. And they've been down by the river and got a great lot of ferns too."
Marise started up, for an instant distracted from her concentration on what Eugenia had said. This was the first time she had seen Nelly and 'Gene since Frank's death. How would they look? How did people go on living? How would they speak, and how could they listen to anything but their own thoughts? What had Frank's death meant to Nelly?
She turned shrinkingly towards Nelly. Nelly was bending down and flicking the dust from her shoes with her handkerchief. When she stood up, she looked straight at Marise. Under the thick-springing, smooth-brushed abundance of her shining fair hair, her eyes, blue as precious stones, looked out with the deep quiet which always seemed so inscrutable to the other woman.
She held out an armful of flowers. "I thought you'd like the white phlox the best. I had a lot of pink too, but I remembered Mrs. Bayweather said white is best at such times."
Marise drew a long breath. What superb self-control!
"Were the biscuits good?" asked Nelly, turning to Agnes. "I was afraid afterward maybe they weren't baked enough."
Marise was swept to her feet. If Nelly could master her nerves like that, she could do better herself. She took the flowers, carried them to the kitchen, and set them in a panful of water. She had not yet looked at 'Gene.
She went to find an umbrella to shield her hatless head from the sun, and on her way out only, cast a swift glance at 'Gene. That was enough. All the blazing, dusty way to the mill, she saw hanging terribly before her that haggard ashy face.
At the mill, she paused in the doorway of the lower office, looking in on the three desk-workers, tapping on their machines, leaning sideways to consult note-books. The young war-cripple, Neale's special protégé, seeing her, got to his feet to ask her what he could do for her.
Marise considered him for a moment before she answered. Was there anything he could do for her? Why had she come? All she could remember for the moment was that singular contraction of her throat, which had come back now.
Then she remembered, "Is Mr. Crittenden here?"
"No, he was called away for the day, urgent business in New Hampshire."
Marise looked about her helplessly. "May I sit down for a moment?"
The young stenographer ran, limping and eager, to offer her a chair, and then, shyly, swung his swivel chair towards her, not wishing to go back to his work, uncertain what to say to his employer's wife.
"When will Mr. Crittenden be back?" asked Marise, although she knew the answer.
"No later than tonight, he said," answered the stenographer. "He spoke particularly about coming back because of Miss Hetty Allen's funeral."
"Yes, of course," said Marise.
There was nothing more to be said, she knew that, nothing more to be done, until Neale came back. But it seemed physically impossible for her to live until then, with the clutch in her throat.
She ought to get up now, at once, and go back to Cousin Hetty's. The Powers were waiting for her return. But her consternation at finding Neale really gone was a blow from which she needed a breathing time to recover. She couldn't have it so. She could never endure a whole day with this possibility like a threatening powder-mine under her feet, ready to go off and bring her inner world to ruin and despair. She put her hand out to take her umbrella and struggled up.
"Any message to leave for Mr. Crittenden?" asked the stenographer, seeing her ready to go.
She shook her head. Her eye fell on the waste-paper basket beside the desk. On one of the empty envelopes, torn in two, the words, "Return to C.K. Lowder," stood out clearly. She turned away and stood motionless, one hand at her temple. She was thinking to herself, "This is simply incredible. There is some monstrous mistake. If I could only think of a way to find it out before it kills me."
She became aware that the young cripple was looking at her anxiously, and saw in his startled, agitated face a reflection of what hers must be. She made an effort to speak quietly, and heard herself say, "Do you happen to remember if Mr. Crittenden was alone as he drove away?"
"Oh no," said the other. "He had had someone with him ever since the afternoon train came in yesterday. Mr. Crittenden drove the car in himself to the Ashley station to meet him. Somebody here on business."
"What sort of a man, do you remember?" asked Marise.
"Well, a clean-shaven man, with a queer thin long mouth, like the pictures of William Jennings Bryan's. And he talked out of one corner of it, the way . . . see here, Mrs. Crittenden, you look awfully tired. Wouldn't you better sit down and rest a moment more?"
Marise shook her head with an impatient gesture. Now she needed to get away from that office as much as she had wished to go to it. The place was hateful to her. The young man's eyes were intolerable. He was one of the people, one of the many, many people who had grown up trusting in Neale.
She swung suddenly to a furious incredulity about the whole thing. It was nonsense! None of it could be true. What were all these people saying to her, Eugenia, Mrs. Powers, this boy . . . ? She would never forgive them for trying to do such an infamous thing. They were trying to make her believe that Neale had been back of Lowder in the low-down swindle that had been practised on the Powers. They were trying to make her believe that for seven years Neale had been lying to her with every breath he drew. Because other men could lie, they thought they could make her believe that Neale did. Because other women's husbands had done base things in business, they thought she would be capable of believing that about Neale. They didn't know how preposterous it was, how close she and Neale had always been, how deeply a part of the whole aspect of life to her, Neale's attitude toward his work had become. Those people did not realize what they were trying to make her believe, it was not only that her husband had been the instigator of a mean little cheat which had cost years of suffering to helpless neighbors, it was the total destruction of all that she had thought Neale to be . . . thought him? Known him to be.
"I must get back at once," she said, with a resentful accent and moved towards the door.
CHAPTER XXIII
MARISE LOOKS DOWN ON THE STARS
She passed out from the office into the yellow glare of the sun, her feet moving steadily forward, with no volition of hers, along the dusty road. And as steadily, with as little volition of hers, march, march, came . . . first what Eugenia had said, the advance from that to Mrs. Powers' words, from that to the stenographer's, to the name on the envelope . . . and then like the door to a white-hot blast-furnace thrown open in her face, came the searing conception of the possibility that it might be true, and all the world lost.
The extremity and horror of this aroused her to a last effort at self-preservation so that she flung the door shut by a fierce incapacity to believe any of those relentless facts which hung one from another with their horrible enchaining progression. No, she had been dreaming. It was all preposterous!
The heat wavered up from the hot earth in visible pulsations and there pulsed through her similar rhythmic waves of feeling; the beginning . . . what Eugenia had said, had said that Neale had told her . . . what Mrs. Powers had said, "Lots of men that run mills do that sort of thing" . . . what the stenographer had said . . . the name on the envelope . . . suppose it should be true.
She was at Cousin Hetty's door now; a give-and-take of women's voices sounding within. "Here's Mrs. Crittenden back. Come on, Nelly, we better be going. There's all the work to do."
Marise went in and sat down, looking at them with stony indifference, at 'Gene this time as well as at the women. The drawn sickness of his ashy face did not move her in the least now. What did she care what he did, what anyone did, till she knew whether she had ever had Neale or not? The women's chatter sounded remote and foolish in her ears.
If Neale had done that . . . if that was the man he was . . . but of course it was preposterous, and she had been dreaming. What was that that Eugenia had said? The descent into hell began again step by step.
The Powers went out, the old woman still talking, chattering, as if anything mattered now.
After they were gone, Agnes ran to the door calling, "Mis' Powers! You forgot your pan and towel after all!" And there was Mrs. Powers again, talking, talking.
She had been saying something that needed an answer apparently, for now she stood waiting, expectant.
"What was that, Mrs. Powers? I was thinking of something else."
"I was just tellin' you that there's going to be a big change over to our house. 'Gene, he told Nelly, as he was setting here waiting for you, how he was going to cut down the big pine one of these days, like she always wanted him to. You know, the one that shades the house so. 'Gene's grandfather planted it, and he's always set the greatest store by it. Used to say he'd just as soon cut his grandmother's throat as chop it down. But Nelly, she's all housekeeper and she never did like the musty way the shade makes our best room smell. I never thought to see the day 'Gene would give in to her about that. He's gi'n in to her about everything else though. Only last night he was tellin' her, he was going to take something out'n the savings-bank and buy her an organ for Addie to learn to play on, that Nelly always hankered after. Seems 'sthough he can't do enough for Nelly, don't it?"
Marise looked at her coldly, incapable of paying enough attention to her to make any comment on what she said. Let them cut down all the trees in the valley, and each other's throats into the bargain, if Neale had . . . if there had never been her Neale, the Neale she thought she had been living with, all these years.
Mrs. Powers had gone finally, and the house was silent at last, so silent that she could now hear quite clearly, as though Eugenia still sat there, what the sweet musical voice was saying over and over. Why had they gone away and left her alone to face this deadly peril which advanced on her step by step without mercy, time after time? Now there was nothing to do but to wait and stand it off.
She was sitting in the same chair, her umbrella still in her hand, waiting, when Agnes came in to say that she had lunch ready. She turned eyes of astonished anger and rebuke on her. "I don't want anything to eat," she said in so strange a voice that Agnes crept back to the kitchen, shuffling and scared.
She was still sitting there, looking fixedly before her, and frowning, when Agnes came to the door to say timidly that the gentleman had come about using his car to meet the train, and wanted to know if he could see Mrs. Crittenden.
Marise looked at her, frowning, and shook her head. But it was not until late that night that she understood the words that Agnes had spoken.
She was still sitting there, rigid, waiting, when Agnes brought in a lighted lamp, and Marise saw that evening had come. The light was extremely disagreeable to her eyes. She got up stiffly, and went outdoors to the porch, sitting down on the steps.
The stars were beginning to come out now. The sight of them suggested something painful, some impression that belonged to that other world that had existed before this day, before she had conceived the possibility that Neale might not be Neale, might never have been Neale, that there was no such thing for her as human integrity. Was it she who had leaned out from the window and felt herself despised by the height and vastness of the stars? From the height and vastness of her need, she looked down on them now, and found them nothing, mere pin-pricks in the sky, compared to this towering doubt of her, this moral need which shouted down all the mere matter on the earth and in the heavens above the earth. Something eternal was at stake now, the faith in righteousness of a human soul.
She had thought childishly, shallowly last night that she had had no faith, and could live with none. That was because she had not conceived what it would be to try to live without faith, because she had not conceived that the very ground under her feet could give way. At that very moment she had had a faith as boundless as the universe, and had forgotten it. And now it was put in doubt. She could not live without it. It was the only vital thing for her.
Was she the woman who had felt forced into acquiescing when Vincent Marsh had said so boldly and violently, that she loved her husband no more, that he was nothing to her now? It seemed to her at this moment that it was a matter of the utmost unimportance whether she loved him or not; but she could not live without believing him. That was all. She could not live without that. Life would be too utterly base . . .
Neale nothing to her? She did not know what he was to her, but the mere possibility of losing her faith in him was like death. It was a thousand times worse than death, which was merely material. This mattered a great deal more than the physical death of someone's body . . . it was the murder, minute by minute, hour by hour, month by month, year by year of all her married life, of all she had found lovable and tolerable and beautiful and real in life.
Of course this could not be true . . . of course not . . . but if it were true, she would find the corrosive poison of a false double meaning in every remembered hour. She did not believe any of those hideously marshaled facts, but if they were true, she would go back over all those recollections of their life together and kill them one by one, because every hour of her life had been founded on the most unthinking, the most absolute, the most recklessly certain trust in Neale. To know that past in peril, which she had counted on as safe, more surely than on anything in life, so surely that she had almost dismissed it from her mind like a treasure laid away in a safe hiding-place . . . to know those memories in danger was a new torture that had never before been devised for any human being. No one had the safe and consecrated past taken from him. Its pricelessness shone on her with a blinding light. What if it should be taken away, if she should find she had never had it, at all . . . ?
The idea was so acute an anguish to her that she startled herself by a cry of suffering.
Agnes' voice behind her asked tremblingly, "Did you call me, Miss Marise?"
Marise shifted her position, drew a breath, and answered in a hard tone, "No."
She knew with one corner of her mind that Agnes must be terrified. What if she were? Marise's life-long habit of divining another's need and ministering to it, vanished like a handful of dust in a storm. What did she care about Agnes? What did she care about anything in the world but that she should have back again what she had valued so little as to lose it from her mind altogether? All of her own energy was strained in the bitterness of keeping her soul alive till Neale should come. She had not the smallest atom of strength to care about the needs of anyone else.
She looked up at the stars, disdainful of them. How small they were, how unimportant in the scheme of things, so much less able to give significance to the universe, than the presence of integrity in a human soul.
If she could have Neale back again, as she had always had him without thinking of it, if she could have her faith in him again, the skies might shrivel up like a scroll, but something eternal would remain in her life.
It seemed to her that she heard a faint sound in the distance, on the road, and her strength ran out of her like water. She tried to stand up but could not.
Yes, it was the car, approaching. The two glaring headlights swept the white road, stopped, and went out. For an instant the dark mass stood motionless in the starlight. Then something moved, a man's tall figure came up the path.
"Is that you, Marise?" asked Neale's voice.
She had not breath to speak, but all of her being cried out silently to him the question which had had all the day such a desperate meaning for her, "Is that you, Neale?"