"I couldn't bear myself," he used to think, "if I wasn't—but, O Lord!"
That "O Lord!" was his summing up of a growing and demoralizing sense of the worthlessness and unreality of life. Like Solomon (and all the rest of us, who see the universe as a mirror for ourselves!) he appraised humanity at his valuation of himself. He didn't use Solomon's six words, but the eight of his generation were just as exact—"The whole blooming outfit is a rotten lie! If," he reflected, "deceit isn't on my 'Lily' line, it is on a thousand other lines." From the small cowardices of appreciations and admirations which one did not really feel, up through the bread-and-butter necessities of business, on into the ridiculousness of what is called "Democracy" or "Liberty"—on, even, into those emotional evasions of logic and reason labeled "Religion"—all lies—all lies! he told himself. "And I," he used to think, looking back on seven years of marriage, "I am the most accomplished liar of the whole shootin' match!... If they get off that G. Washington gag on me any more at the office, somebody'll get their head punched."
All the same, even if he did say, "O Lord!" he was carefully kind to his boring wife.
But when Edith (suddenly grown up, it seemed to Maurice) came back for the fall term, he said "O Lord!" less frequently. The world began to seem to him a less rotten place. "Nice to have you round again, Skeezics!" he told her; and Eleanor, listening, went up to her room, and sat with her fingers pressed hard on her eyes. "It's dreadful to have her around! How can I get rid of her?" she thought. Very often now the flame of jealousy flared up; it scorched her whenever she recognized Edith's "brains," whenever she noticed some gay fearlessness, or easy capability; whenever she watched the girl's high-handed treatment of Maurice: criticizing him! Telling him he was mean because he was always saying he "couldn't afford things"! Declaring that she wished he would stop his everlasting practicing—and apparently not caring a copper for him! If Edith said, "Oh, Maurice, you are a perfect idiot!" Eleanor would see him grin with pleasure; but when Eleanor put her arms around him and kissed him, he sighed. To Maurice's wife these things were all like oil on fire; but it never occurred to her to try to develop in herself any of the qualities he seemed to find attractive in Edith. Instead, she thought of that June day in the meadow by the river when he said he loved her inefficiency—he loved her timidity, and, oh, how he had loved her love! He had made her promise to be jealous! Eleanor was not a reasoning person—probably no jealous woman is; but she did recognize the fact that what made him love her then, made him impatient with her now. This seemed to her irrational; and so, of course, it was!—just as the tide is irrational, or the turning of the earth on its axis is irrational. Nature has nothing to do with reason. So, in its deep and beautiful and animal beginnings, Love, too, is irrational. It has to ascend to Reason! But Eleanor did not know these things. All she knew was that Maurice hurt her, a dozen times a day.
She was brooding over this one Sunday afternoon in late September, when, at the open window of her bedroom, with Bingo snoozing in her lap, she listened to Edith, down in the garden: "How about a jug of dahlias on the table?"
And Maurice: "Bully! Say, Edith, why couldn't we have a yellow scheme for the grub? Orange cup, and that sort of fussy business you make out of cheese and the yolks of eggs? And yellow cakes?"
"Splendid! I'll mix up some perfectly stunning little sponge cakes, 'Lemon Queens.' Yellow as anything!"
This was all to get ready for a tea under the silver poplar, which was dropping yellow leaves down on the green table, and the mossy brick path, and the chairs for the company. The Mortons were coming, and there would be, Eleanor told herself, wearily, the usual shrieking over flat jokes,—Edith's jokes, mostly. Her dislike of Edith was a burning ache below her breastbone. "Maurice has her, so he doesn't want me," she thought; then suddenly she got up and hurried downstairs. "I'll fix the table!" she said, peremptorily.
"It's all done," Edith said; "doesn't it look pretty? Oh, Eleanor, let me put a dahlia behind your ear! You'll look like a Spanish lady!" She put the gorgeous flower into the soft disorder of Eleanor's dark hair, avoiding Bingo's angry objections, and said, with open admiration, "Eleanor, you are handsome! I adore dahlias!" she announced; "those quilly ones, red on the outside and yellow inside! There are some stunning ones on Maple Street, where I saw that Dale woman. Wonder if she'd sell some roots?"
The color flew into Maurice's face. "Did you get your bicycle mended?" he said.