He did not see Edith very often that next winter, "which is just as well," he thought. But his analysis stopped there; he did not ask himself why it was just as well. She made flying visits to Mercer, for shopping or luncheons, so he had glimpses of her, and whenever he saw her he was conscious of a little wistful change in her, for she was shy with him—Edith, shy!—and much gentler. When they discussed the Eternities or the ball game, she never pounded his arm with an energetic and dissenting fist, nor was there ever the faintest suggestion of the sexless "rough-house" of their old jokes! As for coming to town, she explained that she was too busy; she had taken the burden of housekeeping from her mother, and she was doing a good deal of hard reading preparatory to a course of technical training in domestic science, to which she was looking forward when she could find time for it. But whenever she did come to Mercer, she did her duty by rushing in to see Eleanor! Eleanor's criticisms of her, when she rushed out again, always made Maurice silently, but deeply, irritated. The criticisms lessened in the fall, because Eleanor had the pitiful preoccupation of watching poor Don O'Brien fade out of the world; and when he had gone she had to push her own misery aside while his grandmother's heart broke into the meager tears of age upon her "Miss Eleanor's" breast. But, besides that, she did not have the opportunity to criticize Edith, for the Houghtons went abroad.
So the rest of that year went dully by. To Eleanor, it was a time of spasmodic effort to regain Maurice's love; spasmodic, because when she had visions—hideous visions! of Maurice and the "other woman,"—then, her aspirations to regain his love, which had been born in that agony of recognized complicity in his faithlessness, would shrivel up in the vehement flame of jealousy. To Maurice, it was a time of endurance; of vague thoughts of Edith, but of no mental disloyalty to his wife. Its only brightness lay in those rare visits to Medfield, when Jacky looked at him like a worshiping puppy, and asked forty thousand questions which he couldn't answer! They were very careful visits, made only when Maurice was sure Eleanor would not be going to "look for a cook." He always balanced his brief pleasure of an hour with his little boy by an added gentleness to his wife—perhaps a bunch of violets, bought at the florist's on Maple Street where Lily got her flower pots or her bulbs. He was very lonely, and increasingly bothered about Jacky. ... "Lily will let him go plumb to hell. But I put him on the toboggan! ... I'm responsible for his existence," he used to think. And sometimes he repeated the words he had spoken that night when he had felt the first stir of fatherhood, "My little Jacky."
He would hardly have said he loved the child; love had come so gradually, that he had not recognized it! Yet it had come. It had been added to those other intimations of God, which also he had not recognized. Personal Joy on his wedding day had been the first; and the next had come when he looked up at the heights of Law among the stars, and then there had been the terrifying vision of the awfulness of Life, at Jacky's birth. Now, into his soul, arid with long untruth, came this flooding in of Love—which in itself is Life, and Joy, and the fulfilling of Law! Or, as he had said, once, carelessly, "Call it God."
This pursuing God, this inescapable God! was making him acutely uncomfortable now, about Jacky. Maurice felt the discomfort, but he did not recognize it as Salvation, or know Whose mercy sent it! He merely did what most of us do when we suffer: he gave the credit of his pain to the devil—not to Infinite Love. "Oh," the poor fellow thought, coming back one day from a call at the little secret house on Maple Street, "the devil's getting his money's worth out of me; well, I won't squeal about that! But he's getting his money's worth out of my boy, too. She's ruining him!"
He said this once when he had been rather recklessly daring in seeing "his boy." It was Saturday afternoon, and Jacky was free from his detested school. Maurice had given him a new sled, and then had "fallen," as he expressed it, to the little fellow's entreaty: "Mr. Curtis, if you'll come up to the hill, I'll show you how she'll go!" But before they started Maurice had a disagreeable five minutes with Lily. She had told him, tears of laughter running down her rosy cheeks, of some performance of Jacky's. He had asked her, she said, about his paw; "and I said his name was Mr. George Dale, and he died ten or eleven years ago of consumption—had to tell him something, you know! An' he says,—he's great on arithmetic,—'Poor paw!' he says, 'how many years was that before I was born?' I declare, I was all balled up!" Then, as she wiped her laughing eyes, she had grown suddenly angry: "I'm going to take him away from his new Sunday school; the teacher—it was her did the Paul Pry act, and asked him about his father;—well, I guess she ain't much of a lady; I never see her name in the Sunday papers;—she came down on Jacky because he told her a 'lie'; that's what she called it, 'a lie'! Said he'd go to hell if he told lies. I said, 'I won't have you threatening my child!' I declare I felt like saying, 'You go to hell yourself!' but of course I don't say things that ain't refined."
"Well, but Lily, the little beggar must tell the truth—"
"Mr. Curtis, Jacky didn't say anything but what you or me would say a dozen times a day. He just told her he hadn't a library book out, when he had. Seems he forgot to bring it back, so, 'course, he just said he hadn't any book. Well, this teacher, she put the lie onto him. It's a vulgar word, 'lie.' And as for hell, they say society people don't believe there is such a place any more."
When he and his little son walked away (Jacky dragging his magnificent sled), Maurice was nervously anxious to counteract such views.
"Jacobus," he said, "I'm going to tell you something: Big men never say anything that isn't so! Do you get on to that?" (In his own mind he added, "I'm a sweet person to tell him that!") "Promise me you'll never say anything that isn't just exactly so," said Maurice.
"Yes, sir," said Jacky. "Say, Mr. Curtis, have you got teeth you can take out?" When Maurice said, rather absently, that he had not, Jacky's dismay was pathetic. "Why, maw can do that," he said, reproachfully. It was the first flaw in his idol. It took several minutes to recover from the shock of disappointment; then he said: "Lookee here!" He paused beside a hydrant, and with his mittened hand broke off a long icicle, held it up and turned it about so that the sun flashed on it. "Handsome, ain't it?" he asked, timidly.