CHAPTER XVIII MRS. LISTER HAS TWO CALLERS
Mrs. Lister would not at first see Dr. Green. She insisted that she was only tired and that she would be out of bed and downstairs by to-morrow. She had been like this after her father and Basil had died, and she had recovered then without the help of a doctor. It was her mind and not her body which was ailing and there was no medicine for her mind.
Nor should Richard be sent for. She answered the suggestion impatiently.
"I am only too thankful that he is away. I want him to be away. I used to want him to be here always and to have this house when we are gone and marry Cora Scott and have little children, but now I believe the best thing for him is to stay away. I think I did wrong to dissuade you when you had the call from the New York College, papa. We would have plenty for him, wouldn't we, even if he doesn't succeed with his music?"
Dr. Lister laughed.
"Don't add that to your other worries, Mary Alcestis! Richard is not the kind to fail."
"I could easily economize in the house. There are many things one can do without if one only thinks so."
Most of the time she lay still thinking. She turned over and over in her mind the old days, their routine, their precepts. She tried to excuse Basil, to find some flaw in his bringing-up. But she had had exactly the same bringing-up and she had always been obedient to her parents and to the laws of society and of God. The flaw must have been in him.
She thought of Mrs. Bent as a young girl with her pretty face. She had seemed, at least, superior to her father and her station. It was not perhaps her fault that she had gone astray, and helped others to go astray. She had not had any bringing-up, poor soul, except what she had given herself. But one could not excuse her, could not look lightly upon dreadful sin! Again Mary Alcestis heard that frantic pleading in the dark on Cherry Street, saw again Basil's bending face in the light of the dim street lamp.
"It would be best to go away," said Basil distinctly.
When, at last, she tried to go downstairs, she found herself unequal to the exertion. She rose, walked about the room, and returned as quickly as possible to bed, her knees trembling, darkness before her eyes. Then, at last, she consented to have Dr. Green prescribe for her. She could lie here no longer; she must be up and about her business, which was the defending of her house and her name from disgrace.
Dr. Green came, whistling softly, up the stairs and into her room. There he let his tall figure down into an armchair. His eyes were unusually bright, his hair had just been trimmed, his clothes were, comparatively speaking, smooth. He was really, thought Mrs. Lister, rather a handsome man.
He said that her illness was merely exhaustion due to the heat. He would send her some medicine and she must stay in bed for another week. He expected to go to Baltimore for a few days and she was upon no account to stir until he got back.
"You take life far too strenuously. I dare say you are saving 'Manda all the time."
When his taking of her pulse and his somewhat perfunctory inquiry about her symptoms were over, he did not go. The room was deliciously cool after the blazing heat through which he had walked and there was even a slight breeze, blowing in between the slats of the bowed shutters and swaying the curtains gently. 'Manda came presently with a tray and a glass of lemonade and he called down the blessings of Heaven upon her in his extravagant way.
When she had gone he asked Mrs. Lister, by way of opening a pleasant and soothing conversation, whether she had read Eleanor Bent's story.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Lister.
"Did you think it was a good story?"
Mrs. Lister answered with a fainter "yes." She was determined to give poor Eleanor her due; indeed, "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class" was not nearly so "wild" as she expected. Then she ventured a question.
"Dr. Green, if a person has talent, is it likely to be inherited, or does it spring up of itself?"
Dr. Green, strange to say, flushed scarlet. Mrs. Lister grew panic-stricken. What had she said? What did he know? What might she not have put into his head? She wished that he would go, she became suddenly afraid of her own tongue. He began a lengthy dissertation upon the laws of heredity as laid down by scientists. Some one among Eleanor's ancestors had certainly had brains and had used them. She had a very good mind; she might go far if she could be brought to value her talent as it should be valued; if she could be persuaded to hold it higher than any marital experience, for instance.
"I do not think marriage is for every one," agreed Mary Alcestis. "There are some people who do not seem equal to its demands."
Dr. Green sniffed the pleasant air.
"I think Eleanor would be equal to it. I meant it would probably ruin her career. I think the majority of young people have been tricked, trapped, by the instinct to mate."
"Oh!" said Mary Alcestis. "I don't agree with you."
"She ought to have new experiences of life," went on Dr. Green. "She should get out of this back water into the fuller current." He was rather pleased with his metaphor.
A gleam of hope illuminated Mrs. Lister's despair.
"Perhaps we could help," she said eagerly. "Her mother must have found her education and her clothing rather expensive. She always wears such very pretty clothes. And she takes lessons from Thomasina, and I hear—I hear she has a very fine piano. If we could do anything in a quiet way for her, I am sure Dr. Lister would be willing. I—we should be very, very glad."
"I think there is no lack of money," said Dr. Green.
Then with a promptness which indicated to Mrs. Lister a connection in his mind between the two subjects, he began to speak of Basil Everman.
"Your brother must have been a very brilliant person."
Mary Alcestis's body moved with a slight convulsive motion under the bed-covers.
"He was a dear little boy," said she. "He and Thomasina Davis and I used to play together."
"His death was a calamity," said Dr. Green. "But I needn't tell you that, for no one could value him as highly as you do, naturally. But it was a pity, a very great pity. I suppose we will have a book about him some day. Eleanor Bent might do such a piece of work when she's older. Biography is far more interesting and far harder to do well than fiction. Eleanor—"
"Did you say you were going to Baltimore?" asked Mrs. Lister faintly.
Dr. Green pulled out his watch.
"I am going to Baltimore in exactly one half-hour and I have a satchel to pack. Good-bye and do as I tell you."
Mrs. Lister lay in a cold perspiration. Eleanor writing a book about Basil! She tried to grip the smooth sheet drawn tightly over the smooth mattress; finally she put both hands over her face. She forgot Basil, she forgot Richard, she forgot everything except a prayer that she might not scream.
Thomasina came in the front door as Dr. Green went out. She was told by him that Mrs. Lister was only exhausted by the heat, that company would do her good, and that she, Thomasina, should go upstairs and stay as long as she could. She glanced about as she went through the hall, her mind filled with pleasant recollections of the former dwellers in the high-ceilinged rooms. A friendship handed down from generation to generation as was hers with the Everman family was rare and precious.
She laid her rose-colored parasol on the hall table and went slowly up the stairs. When she had almost reached the top, she heard the sound of a smothered sob, and remembered with a pang the days when she had sat with Mary Alcestis beside her father's coffin. Poor Mary Alcestis had had a good deal to bear. What could be the matter now? Surely, surely nothing could have happened to Richard! Thomasina hastened her steps.
Mrs. Lister lay face downward, her cheek pressed deep into the pillow. Her hands were clenched above her head and the bed shook with the violence of her weeping. She had now passed the limit of endurance.
Thomasina went close to the ample bed with its quivering figure.
"Mary Alcestis, I am here and I will stay with you. If it does you good to cry, I'll stand guard, so cry away."
Thomasina bowed one shutter a little more closely and closed the door and then sat down in the chair which Dr. Green had left. There could be nothing the matter with Richard, or Dr. Green would have told her.
Mrs. Lister did not, as Thomasina suggested, have her cry out. She tried at once to control herself, and succeeded bravely with her tears. But the hysterical impulse was not spent. It would have been better if she had continued to weep, but instead she began to talk, and having begun, could not stop.
She told Thomasina the whole story of Basil from the day of his birth as though Thomasina had never seen or heard of him.
"We did everything we could for him, father and I—everything. I felt I must make up mother's loss to him. We—"
"Everything except understand him," said Thomasina to herself.
"We prayed—that is father did—with him, and talked with him, and labored with him, and watched for him."
"But did not sympathize with him," said Thomasina, again to herself.
"But when it came to Margie Ginter, oh, Thomasina! it was too hard with father the president of the college and so admir—"
"To Margie Ginter!" repeated Thomasina.
"Oh, hush, Thomasina! Do not speak so loud! I have never talked about it with you, because it was my own brother, and I wanted you to think as well as you could of him, and because we have never talked about such things. But you must know, Thomasina!"
"I know nothing!"
"I mean you will have to know, because it is creeping out."
"Creeping out!" Thomasina's voice was horror-struck. "What is creeping out?"
"He began to go with Margie Ginter here. He walked with her in the evenings and he used to go often to the tavern. You know how we used to run past the tavern, Thomasina!"
"This is madness, Mary Alcestis!"
"It is not. I saw them and heard them. I was coming home from your house and I heard them. She was pleading with Basil to help her and he said it would be best to go away. She was crying, and I followed them down Cherry Street. I felt I must know so as to tell my father. It was very dark and a storm was coming, but I followed them nevertheless."
"Followed them?"
"It was my duty. Don't look at me like that, Thomasina! Do you suppose I would believe anything against Basil I didn't have to believe? I never loved any one more than him—not even Richard, you know that. I have had this hanging over me for years. You haven't had much experience with trouble or sorrow or you would understand better than you do. And then this dreadful Mr. Utterly from New York determined to pry into our affairs. It is a wonder that I am living to-day, indeed it is!"
"Basil did nothing that could not be published to the world!" said Thomasina sharply. "What is the matter with you? What are you afraid of? Have you repeated this to any one else?"
"You know me better than that," said Mrs. Lister with dignity. "You have been my companion since we were children. How can you ask such a question?"
"But what do you mean? What is there to suspect about Basil? What is creeping out?"
"You are so sharp-witted about many things, Thomasina. You know so much more than I do in so many ways. You know what I mean and yet you pretend that you do not!"
"I do not know what you mean!"
"Even Mr. Utterly saw that Eleanor Bent has eyes like Basil and he never saw her but once or twice. You can't fail to see it! And there is this writing!"
Thomasina always sat quietly, but now she seemed to have turned to stone. After a long time Mary Alcestis took her hands from her eyes and looked up.
"You look at me as though I were a fool and wicked, too, Thomasina."
Thomasina made no answer, but continued to stare with a face as white as Mrs. Lister's sheets. Mrs. Lister sat up suddenly in bed.
"I hear some one downstairs, I believe it is Dr. Lister. Will you tell him, Thomasina, that I am trying to sleep?"
Thomasina rose quickly.
"You are a fool, Mary Alcestis," said she slowly.
"Oh, Thomasina!" Mary Alcestis laid herself down.
"This is an invention of your own brain. Shame upon you, Mary Alcestis!"
Mrs. Lister now covered her face with the sheet.
Thomasina went out and closed the door. The astonishment in her eyes had changed to a sick horror. She held feebly to the hand rail as she descended the steps. For the first moment in her life she looked old. She heard Dr. Lister moving about in his study, but she did not deliver Mary Alcestis's message. It made no difference to her whether or not Mary Alcestis was disturbed in her sleep.
Forgetting to raise her sunshade, she crossed the sunniest spaces of the campus without feeling the heat, and went down the street past her own gateway to Dr. Green's office. There she waited, sitting straight in a small stiff chair until black Virginia, in answer to her ring, entered from a distant quarter of the house. Virginia blinked away the last drowsiness of her mid-morning nap as she looked admiringly at Thomasina.
"Doctor's gone away, Miss Thomas'."
"Where to?"
"Baltimore."
"I saw him less than an hour ago."
"Yessum, but he went to the train like a cyclone."
"When will he be back?"
"Couple o' days, I guess. Was yo' sick, Miss Thomas'?"
Thomasina rose unsteadily.
"No."
"Shall I write anything on the slate?"
"No, thank you, Virginia."
"Can I get you a glass o' water, Miss Thomas'?"
"No, thank you."
With a dragging step, Thomasina proceeded on her way. She opened her door and entered the hall and looked up the broad stairway toward the second floor. The stairway seemed very steep, and she stepped quickly into her parlor and shut the door and sat down in the nearest chair. By this time she looked like death.