CHAPTER XVII MRS. LISTER TAKES TO HER BED
Surely there could have been no more remarkable coincidence than this proximity in "Willard's Magazine" of the work of Basil Everman and of Eleanor Bent. It seemed to Mrs. Lister that their connection must be blazoned thereby to the world, that the two compositions must bear on their faces evidence which the least discerning could interpret. Things done in secret could not be hidden; all her efforts of years to save the name of Basil from disgrace were of no avail before the power of God's law. She had given one painful, fascinated reading to the "Scarlet Letter"; to her, now, Basil and his companion were approaching the scaffold in the market-place for their final acknowledgment of common guilt.
After a few days she rose, white and trembling, from her bed and went once more into a suspicious world. She had faced it for twenty years, she would face it again.
But in spite of her terror, the coincidence apparently suggested nothing to Waltonville, brought back no damning recollection to any human being. The memory of mankind is short; that which she had desired was accomplished; Basil's swinging step, his bright eyes, his dark, beautiful hair were long ago forgotten; the step so like his, the eyes lit by the same fire, the mass of dark curls recalled his image as little as did this youthful writing connect itself with his work. As a matter of fact, Eleanor's account of a semi-pathetic, semi-humorous college incident was not in the least like Basil's work, but to Mary Alcestis writing was writing.
Waltonville's response to Basil's story was varied. Mrs. Scott did not think it in any way remarkable; it reminded her, she said, of the productions of Edgar Allan Poe, and was therefore a little old-fashioned.
"He gave us long ago our fill of horrors," said she lightly. "And I don't think this is even as horrible as 'The Black Cat' and it certainly doesn't compare with 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue.'"
With Utterly's opinions as a stepping-stone she had leaped far above him, as one might leap from a supporting hand into a high saddle. She talked until her husband blushed, until his soul writhed. As for Basil Everman's story, she thought Utterly had been absurd to talk about a thousand dollars.
"I warrant that Mrs. Lister has searched through every old trunk in the attic," said she.
Dr. Scott stirred with one of his uneasy little motions, but made no other answer. He was having a restless, unhappy summer, the worst he had passed since his marriage. There was literally nothing in life which was worth while. He longed to go away, he longed for the companionship of those with kindred tastes and gentle ways, he longed for a sight of the foreign lands of which he dreamed. He stood sometimes and looked about his house with its frivolous and worthless gauds; he thought of the bill for Mrs. Scott's outing, postponed a little this year beyond its usual date, and then of how simply one could live in Italy for a springtime.
Italy!—He took a book from his shelf and opened it.
"A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold or bossed with jasper. Beneath the unsullied sea drew in, deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave.... It lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at evening, than a bar of the sunset that could not pass away; but for its power, it must have seemed to them that they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet whose orient edge widened through the ether. A world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. No foulness nor tumult in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrilling silence. No weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, or straw-built shed. Only the strength as of rock, and the finished setting of stones most precious. And round them, far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in the glancing field. Ethereal strength of Alps, dreamlike, vanishing in high procession beyond the Torcellan shore; blue islands of Paduan hills, poised in the golden west. Above free winds and fiery clouds ranging at their will;—brightness out of the north, and balm from the south, and the stars of evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched heaven and circling sea."
Dr. Scott sighed and took down another book, then for hours he was dull to the passing of time. Sometimes he was able to lose himself in dreams. But when he woke his house was all the more intolerable and even his study offered no balm. Late July brought Walter for a visit and Walter seemed more than ever worldly, smart, progressive, and intolerable. Cora sat in her room silent and white-faced. Sometimes she read for a long time from one of her padded poets. Mrs. Scott longed for Atlantic City and complained about the Listers.
To Dr. Scott the story of Basil Everman exhibited all the cruel sadness of human fate. His imagination was fertile and he reconstructed Basil, an alien spirit in the Everman house. His speech was not the speech of Puritanic theology, his ways could not have been the ways of Mary Alcestis. He was so soon a ghost, wandering forlorn, his work only begun when life was ended! Dr. Scott meant to talk to Thomasina Davis about him—she surely would remember him.
He saw no reason why "Bitter Bread" should not make a little book. Would the Listers think of him as the editor for such a volume? So happy an event was hardly, in this disappointing world, probable; nevertheless, though he knew himself to be reckoning without any host whatever, he began to put together editorial words and phrases. Then, remembering Utterly, who had a certain right as a discoverer, he ceased dreaming.
Mrs. Scott thought Eleanor's story poor and called attention to the fact that she had taken Dr. Green's office as a model for untidiness, at which he laughed immoderately. He said that Eleanor might use himself or his office as a model at any time or to any extent she wished.
"Undoubtedly she has some kind of a pull," was Mrs. Scott's next comment.
"Pull?" repeated Dr. Scott nervously.
"Yes, influence over the editor," explained Mrs. Scott, "pull" in this sense being a new usage adopted from Walter. "Perhaps a financial influence. They seem to have money."
Thomasina Davis, when she opened her copy of "Willard's Magazine," grew pale; then she put it aside and went to walk up and down her garden. It was a long time before serenity returned to her countenance.
Later in the day she went to the Bents' to congratulate Eleanor. It was probable, she thought, that no one else in Waltonville but Dr. Scott would say anything to her. Eleanor looked ill and troubled, not as one would expect a rising author to look, and her mother looked even more distressed. They sat on the porch with Mrs. Bent watching her daughter anxiously, from the background, the dark circles under her eyes telling of sleepless nights.
"You ought to take Eleanor away for a vacation," advised Thomasina. "There is no place superior to Waltonville, but you have to go away sometimes to realize it. Perhaps she would like to go somewhere with me."
To Thomasina's astonishment Eleanor burst into tears, and rising, overwhelmed with mortification, went indoors.
"She ain't very well," explained Mrs. Bent, who was overwhelmed also. "Please do excuse her, Miss Davis. She has studied hard and she has practiced too much since she got her piano. That is, she did, but she don't now."
"Perhaps she ought to see Dr. Green."
"Perhaps." But Mrs. Bent's forehead did not smooth itself out at the suggestion. Her anxieties tightened about her daily like a coil of wire long ago flung out and now being wound closer and closer.
Thomasina said nothing to Mrs. Lister about Basil's story. They had never talked about him, for though they had been intimate companions, Mary Alcestis had shut her out with every one else from her grief. She believed that Thomasina had thought even when they were children that she did not love him enough, was not always amiable with him. Not love Basil! It was because she had loved him so dearly, so desperately, that she had tried to watch over him, to lead him, to admonish him. A woman who had never been really in love, who had never married, who had never had children, who had always maintained even toward Dr. Lister an air of mental equality, could not be expected to know the height and depth of love which Mary Alcestis knew. Thomasina, for all her bright mind and all her knowledge of many things, had had little experience of life's realities.
From others the Listers had comments in plenty. "To the relatives of Basil Everman, Waltonville, Pennsylvania," had come to be a familiar address to the postmaster. Editors wrote asking whether there had not been preserved other compositions of Basil Everman. They would welcome even fragmentary notes. Could not anything be found by searching? Dr. Lister went to the attic and opened the little trunk and took the Euripides and the Æschylus down to his study. He laid his hand for an instant on the upper drawer of the old bureau where Basil's clothes were packed, but did not open it. These clothes should long, long ago have been given away or burned.
A few old friends wrote to Dr. Scott for information about his distinguished fellow citizen. The story was to be followed in "Willard's" by "Roses of Pæstum" and "Storm." It promised to be fashionable to reprint old material. Dr. Lister heard nothing from Mr. Utterly, but imagined him swelling with pride and heard his sharp, high voice going on interminably about the rights of the public in all the details of an author's life.
Richard sat about quietly, holding a book in his hand, but not reading. His first experience with pain appalled him. So this was the world, was it? this was life? Was this dull shade the real color of the sky, this heavy vapor the atmosphere? He could not reconcile so malevolent a trick of fate with any conception of benevolence. Presently he began to resent his misery. He had done nothing to deserve this pain.
To his side, as he sat in Dr. Lister's study or on the porch, his mother made frequent journeys.
"Dinner-time, Richard," said Mary Alcestis gently. "Fried chicken, Richard," she would add hopefully. Or, "'Manda has just finished baking, Richard. Would you like a little cake? It would please 'Manda, Richard." Or—now Mrs. Lister's heart throbbed with hope—"Would you like to have the piano tuned, Richard?"
To all these suggestions he returned a polite, "No, I thank you, mother." No tuning or feeding could help either the piano or Richard now.
Once he turned upon his mother with a question.
"Mother, do you mean to say that during all these years, you and Mrs. Bent have never exchanged a word about—this matter?"
"She came up to me once on the street with her little girl," confessed Mrs. Lister tremulously. "But of course I couldn't talk to her there—or anywhere!"
"What did she say?"
"She said she wanted to talk to me about Basil."
Finally Mrs. Lister yielded her citadel.
"Richard, your father and I have been talking about music. We think that when you get your clavier with your Commencement money, we had better get a piano also. Father thinks I should go with you to Baltimore and that it would be well to ask Thomasina to go too. You could have it to practice on now, and then it would be here when you came from—from New York, Richard."
Richard made no answer.
"Would you like that, dear?"
Richard laid his book on the table before him. He remembered the things which had been said about music, about art, about him! He laid his head down on his arms.
"A grand piano, Richard!" said Mrs. Lister, appealingly. "Papa thinks—"
"I would like to be let alone!" said Richard. "That is all I ask."
But Mrs. Lister had not yet made the hardest of her sacrificial suggestions. She was grieved by Richard's response, but she had determined to bear anything.
"I am thinking of that young girl," said she timidly.
"What young girl?" asked Richard with a warning savageness.
"Of Miss Bent. I don't like you to seem rude to her. I don't suppose she knows anything about her history. I can't believe she does. Perhaps you might make another call on her—with Thomasina. I am sure she would go with you if you would ask her. There would not be anything strange in it. Then you would go away and it would be—over. You will have new scenes."
In answer Richard simply looked at his mother. He believed that her mind was affected by long brooding over his Uncle Basil; thus only could her behavior and her conversation be explained. To embrace Eleanor Bent, to stay away from her for days, and then to call upon her with Thomasina Davis! It was, indeed, a fantastic scheme.
Presently he went away. His father's sisters sent once more from St. Louis an urgent invitation and to their quiet household he was persuaded to go. Mary Alcestis composed a letter saying that he had not been well and that he did not care at the present time for gayety. Before mailing the letter she wrote another saying that he had lived so entirely with older folk that it was good for him to have gayety and go about with young people. When she had finished this letter the possibility of a western daughter-in-law disturbed her. In the end she destroyed both letters and he set out unencumbered by directions.
Casually in Dr. Green's office Dr. Lister asked about the marriage of first cousins and Dr. Green reached into the irregular pile of "Lancets" behind him and dragged out a copy, sending thereby the superincumbent stack to the floor. Upon it he did not bestow a glance.
"There, read the pleasant catalogue! Deaf children, dumb children, children malformed, children susceptible to disease, children with rickets, no children at all. I can give you a dozen articles if this doesn't suffice."
Early in August the Listers went to call upon Thomasina. In her living-room there was a single dim light, only a little brighter than the moonlight outside. The rest of Waltonville whose rooms blazed, wondered often how she made her parlor so restful, so comfortable to talk in. From the garden through the long doors came the odor of jasmine and sweet clematis and the heavier scent of August lilies.
She had been walking in her garden and when she came in to meet her guests there appeared with her a slender young figure in a white dress. Eleanor had come to show that she was not a fool, that she could talk sensibly and not burst out crying. Her heart had changed from a delicate throbbing organ into a hard lump, but her eyes were dry.
At sight of Eleanor, Mrs. Lister drew closer to Dr. Lister, who looked at her in return as sternly as he ever looked at any one. Thomasina asked at once about Richard, where he was and how soon he would be at home. Mrs. Scott had come to her with her story, and Thomasina, concealing her surprise, had said that she saw nothing unsuitable in such a friendship. In a few hours she ceased even to be surprised, she felt only an aching envy for youth and happiness. She did not share Dr. Green's opinion that youthful marriages were suicidal. But something evidently had gone wrong between Richard and Eleanor. Could Mrs. Scott have made trouble between them!
Mrs. Lister told where Richard had gone and said they did not know when he would return.
"He is going to New York late in the fall," she explained. "He is going to be a musician."
Thomasina's arm felt the throb of Eleanor's heart.
Before the Listers had found seats, the knocker sounded again. Now the Scotts arrived. This was the evening that Dr. Scott had set as the limit of his boredom. Things had grown no better; they had, on the contrary, grown worse. But when he had set out, Mrs. Scott announced her intention of accompanying him, and she was now at his side, effervescent, sharp-voiced, and more than usually trying to her husband.
Eleanor lingered, feeling awkward and unhappy. She wished to be alone with her own thoughts of Richard, alone with her never-ending effort to account for his silence, his departure without a good-bye. Perhaps he would write to her! The possibility made her happy for a second. She waited a pause in the conversation so that she might go home, but none came. When Dr. Green arrived, the talk grew more rapid and the opportunity seemed farther away.
Of the hard feeling which she had exhibited against Eleanor, Mrs. Scott gave now no sign. She spoke of "Our budding authoress" with whom she said she had had little opportunity thus far to become acquainted. How, she asked, with her sweetest expression, did one write? She drew a picture of Eleanor sitting before a ream of paper, laying aside finished sheets with machine-like regularity.
Eleanor made no answer; she did not wish to be rude, but she had no words. It was before the days when the reporter penetrated through the boudoir of the writer or artist into the more secret regions of his work-room to watch hands flitting above a typewriter, or to photograph preoccupation at a flower-laden mahogany desk. Eleanor blushed as though she had been asked to describe the process of putting on her clothes.
Her silence did not suggest to Mrs. Scott the propriety of stopping.
"What are you going to do, Miss Bent?"
"What do you mean, Mrs. Scott?"
"I mean are you going to bury your talent in Waltonville or are you going into the great world? I hear that women are going into all the fields of men. Perhaps you will be a reporter and write us all up!"
"I have no plans for anything of that kind."
"You speak as though Waltonville were a cemetery, Mrs. Scott," said Thomasina.
"Where did you get the idea for your little story?" persisted Mrs. Scott.
It was clear now that Eleanor was being baited. Even Mrs. Lister felt sympathy. Eleanor's cheeks flamed; their color could be seen even in the dim light. Thomasina was about to answer, when Dr. Green interposed.
"Out of her head, Mrs. Scott, where all authors that are worth while get theirs. That's where Shakespeare got his and where Basil Everman got his. Their heads are differently stocked from ours. You don't suppose they have to see everything they write about, do you? Mrs. Lister, I have been deeply interested in Basil Everman. I suppose it is too much to hope for—but is it possible that anything else will turn up?"
"I'm afraid not," answered Dr. Lister. "There is a chance of something in other magazines of the time, but I fancy they have been pretty carefully gone over in that hope."
Mrs. Scott, never long quiet, turned to Mrs. Lister.
"Cora had a letter from Richard."
"Did she?" said Mrs. Lister. "That was nice."
She spoke smoothly, but a sudden pang of sympathy for Eleanor shot through her heart. Eleanor must love Richard, could not do otherwise. His caring for Cora became suddenly undesirable; his tragedy had lifted him above her. Mrs. Lister was glad now that he was going away, to win fame, to separate himself from Waltonville. He could never emancipate himself from Mrs. Scott if he were her son-in-law. That fate she could not wish any one, least of all her dear child. The occasion of his letter to Cora was the return of a book long since lent him and forgotten.
"I told him he must write at once and explain why he had kept it so long," explained Mary Alcestis simply.
Eleanor moved suddenly closer to Mrs. Lister.
"I read about Basil Everman," said she hurriedly. "I was mortified to see my poor story published in the same magazine with his. I think he was wonderful. It makes Waltonville seem like a different place when one realizes that he lived here. It must have been wonderful to be with him, to help him. There is a poem about 'a brother, a sister, anything to thee!' My mother says she remembers him well. I think she knew him quite well and admired him very much. I told her she ought to come to you and talk to you about him."
"Yes," said Mrs. Lister faintly.
It seemed to her that she went on saying "yes" interminably. She saw tearful Mrs. Bent, laying her hand on Richard's coach, her little gray-eyed daughter clinging to her and staring round-eyed at the other baby. She had not described this incident in full either to Dr. Lister or to Richard. She could not confess how sharply she had refused to talk to Mrs. Bent; how she had backed away, literally pulling the coach from under her hand; how eyes and voice had expressed horror and anger. It was not likely, whatever her daughter might think, that Mrs. Bent would approach her again! But equally dreadful things had happened. She looked at poor Eleanor now as she had looked at her mother; then she rose to go. The next morning she stayed in bed, waiting for the blow to fall.