And Edith said: "You bet I am! Only we'll have to go to Fern Hill for my skates!"
Maurice said, "All right!" and off they went, the glowing vigor and youth of them a beauty in itself!
So it was that when Eleanor got home, after having gently and patiently sung to poor Donny for nearly an hour, the library was empty; but a note on the mantelpiece said: "We've gone skating.—E. and M." "She waited until I went out," Eleanor thought; "then she suggested it to him!" She sat down, huddling over the fire, and thinking how Maurice neglected her; "He doesn't want me. He likes to go off with Edith, alone!" They had probably gone to the river—"our river!"—that broad part just below the meadow, where there was apt to be good skating. That made her remember the September day and the picnic, when Edith had talked about jealousy—"Bingoism," she had called it. "She tried to attract him by being smart. I detest smartness!" The burning pain under her breastbone was intolerable. She thought of the impertinent things Edith had said that day—and the ridiculous inference that if the person of whom you were jealous, was more attractive in any way than you were yourself, it was unreasonable to be jealous;—"get busy, and be attractive!" Edith had said, with pert shallowness. "She doesn't know what she's talking about!" Eleanor said; and jealousy seared her mind as a flame might have seared her flesh. "I haven't skated since I was a girl.... I—I believe next winter I'll take it up again." The tears stood in her eyes.
It was at that moment that the telegram was brought into the library.
"Mr. Curtis isn't in," Eleanor told the maid; then she did what anyone would do, in the absence of the person to whom the dispatch was addressed; signed for it ... opened it ... read it.
Jacky's sick; please come over quick.
L. D.
"There's no answer," she said. When the maid had left the room, Maurice's wife moistened the flap of the flimsy brown envelope—it had been caught only on one side; got up, went into the hall, laid the dispatch on the table, came back to the library, and fainted dead away.
No one heard her fall, so no one came to help her—except her little dog, scrabbling stiffly out of his basket, and coming to crouch, whining, against her shoulder. It was only a minute before her eyelids flickered open;—closed—opened again. After a while she tried to rise, clutching with one hand at the rung of a chair, and with the other trying to prop herself up; but her head swam, and she sank back. She lay still for a minute; then realized that if Maurice came in and found her there on the floor, he would know that she had read the telegram.... So again she tried to pull herself up; caught at the edge of his desk, turned sick, saw everything black; tried again; then, slowly, the room whirling about her, got into a chair and lay back, crumpled up, blindly dizzy, and conscious of only one thing: she must get upstairs to her own room before Edith and Maurice came home! She didn't know why she wanted to do this; she was even a little surprised at herself, as she had been surprised when, that night on the mountain, "to save Maurice," she had, instinctively, done one sensible thing after another. So now she knew that, when he came home with Edith, Maurice must be saved "a scene." He must not discover, yet, that ... she knew.
For of course now, it was knowledge, not suspicion: Maurice was summoned to see a sick boy called Jacky; Jacky was the child of L. D.; and L. D. was the Dale woman, who had lived in the house on Maple Street. Her shameful suspicion had not been shameful! It had been the recognition of a fact.... Clutching at supporting chairs, Eleanor, somehow, got out of the library; saw that brown envelope in the hall, stopped (holding with one hand to the table), to make sure it was sealed. Bingo, following her, whimpered to be lifted and carried upstairs, but she didn't notice him. She just clung to the banisters and toiled up to her room. She pushed open her door and looked at her bed, desiring it so passionately that it seemed to her she couldn't live to reach it—to fall into it, as one might fall into the grave, enamored with death. Down in the hall the little dog cried. She didn't faint again. She just lay there, without feeling, or suffering. After a while she heard the front door open and close; heard Edith's voice: "Hullo, Eleanor! Where are you? We've had a bully time!" Heard Maurice: "Headache, Nelly? Too ba—" Then silence; he must have seen the envelope—picked it up—read it.... That was why he didn't finish that word—so hideously exact!—"bad." After a while he came tiptoeing into the room.