This Side of Glory (26 page)

She was sick with fatigue and at the same time thrilled with victory. It was ten o’clock at night when she realized that a few minutes of check-writing was all that was left for her to do. Her deposit slips had been returned from the bank that afternoon, and she had turned them over in her hands, too tired to grasp at once that the goal for which she had been striving so passionately was lying within reach. How much of this year’s return was clear profit she could not tell until she had balanced her books, but her thoughts wandered happily among the possible figures. She was so tired now she could hardly see to write checks, but she concluded that a night’s sleep would refresh her and she could attend to her ledgers in the morning.

But though she was exquisitely happy, she did not sleep well that night. Her head ached persistently, and the ticking clock made her so jumpy that she got up at last and put it in the bathroom. When at last she fell asleep she had muddled dreams in which she was alternately working among rows of cotton the pages of figures that seemed to stretch through all eternity. She woke aching in every joint, and writing the checks loomed ahead of her as a task too onerous to be performed.

Disgusted at her weakness, Eleanor dragged herself downstairs and boiled an egg she did not want and made herself eat it, along with a pot of coffee in the hope that it would ease her throbbing head. It did no good, but she gave orders that she was not to be interrupted and went into her study.

The joints of her fingers hurt so that she found it hard to open the desk, and she fumbled with the fountain pen like a child, finding it hard to unscrew the cap. She opened her checkbook. “In ten minutes,” she reminded herself, “I’ll be done. Ten minutes.”

She could see everything at once—her realization that the plantation was mortgaged, the collapse of the cotton market, her discovery of gun-cotton, her tractors, her years of work. Now, after ten minutes of pushing a pen, it would be over. She had her victory, and strangely, she felt so wretched that she did not care. She began to make out the first check.

It was hard for her to write. Her fingers moved slowly, and what she wrote was not clear before her eyes. The curious creeping aches would not leave her.

A paralyzing fear struck her, and she pushed it violently out of her mind. She was not sick, she never was, she had no time for it. She had to write these checks and the letters to go with them. She could not have influenza.

But there was no fighting back her sensations. Influenza crept into her hips and knees, wrenching at them till she felt as if the joints were coming apart; into her feet, till she was conscious of ten separate toes, each one with a drag of its own; into her shoulders till she could hardly raise her hand to push the hair back from her pounding head; into her fingers, till she could not support her head at all and let it fall down on her chest. There was an empty feeling behind her forehead. Her skin was blazing with fever and inside her was a chill as though a great icicle had been thrust down beside her spine.

Eleanor sat there, aware that the room was misshapen and moving around. Then for a moment her eyes cleared. She had one more check to write. Moving her hand slowly she grasped the pen; she took a deep breath, steadied the checkbook, and wrote it, moving the pen slowly and heavily, and signing her name like a child just learning how to write. The pen fell out of her hand again. It slipped down to her lap, leaving a blot on her dress, and rolled on the floor. Eleanor looked at it, blinking. The pen moved around. Everything in the room was wavering like shadows in the firelight. She did not care. Through the fever and the thousand aches a small clear spot in her mind knew that she had finished.

She felt herself slip down to the floor, and she caught at the chair she had been occupying. She was not unconscious. She knew she was on the floor, her head on the seat of the chair, and her hands holding it because it felt solid in the tottering room. A hundred ideas tumbled about in her head. Somebody had to get the children’s dinner, Bob Purcell had warned her she would go to pieces, she couldn’t help it, but it did not matter very much now because she had finished everything. Somebody would mail those checks and Ardeith was safe, and she had enough money to live on a long time even if she did not plant any cotton at all. When Cameo found her an hour later she was still on the floor, mumbling that she had finished.

Cameo called the yard-boy, and between them they carried her upstairs. By this time she was quite delirious.

5

Eleanor was aware of fever and of an acute discomfort that reached from her head to her feet, making her surprised that there should be so much of her to ache at once. It was dark, with spots of light piercing the black now and then and hurting her eyes, and she kept remembering figures and saying them out loud, seventeen cents, twenty cents, twenty-seven cents, thirty-eight cents. She said them over and over.

After a long time she realized that she was lying in bed and that it seemed dark because her eyes were closed. Somebody was drawing the covers up over her arms. She opened her eyes. She was in her own bed, under the crimson tester, and bending over her was a strange woman in white with a white mask over the lower part of her face. Eleanor said “Thirty-eight cents,” and the woman paid no attention. She moved away and Eleanor saw, sitting at the foot of the bed, a curiously familiar man whose mouth and nose were hidden by a square of gauze. She looked at the man and he looked at her. He was big and thick, and his eyes were blue and what she could see of his face was ruddy. Eleanor moved uncomfortably. He reached to pat her, awkwardly, with a big hand that had square nails, and when she saw his hand she knew him. She stopped saying figures. A strange peace came over her aching body. She lay quiet for a moment, and then said, “Dad.”

He sprang up and came to the head of the bed. It seemed quite impossible for her to say anything else. He sat down on the bedstep. Eleanor managed to draw her hand out from under the cover, and he took it in his. From behind his mask he said, “It’s all right, baby.” She held his hand and let her eyes close again. He was here, he was always around somehow when she needed him, and he would take care of her because he knew she could not do any more. She could give herself up to being just as sick as she pleased.

In the weeks after that Eleanor was aware of very little except her own suffering. There came what seemed like years and years of torment when she could not breathe or speak and her only wish was that they would quit worrying her so she could die and get it over with. Without recalling that anybody had told her, she gathered that her attack of war-flu had turned into the particularly frightful type of pneumonia that sometimes followed it in a constitution too depleted to fight back.

But she came up out of it, white and weak and tired, and slowly she began to take an interest in things and ask questions. Her father was frequently there—he made quick trips between Ardeith and his levee camps—and in his absence her mother was with her, or one of her sisters. The children were in New Orleans with her family. Mamie and Dilcy were well. The horror was passing.

The nurse put her into the wheel-chair one bright morning and let her sit by the window in a shaft of pale winter sunshine.

“You have several letters from your husband,” she said. “Your father has them.”

“Please!” said Eleanor.

The nurse smiled and went to call Fred, who was downstairs having a mid-morning cup of coffee. Fred came in accompanied by Bob Purcell. Eleanor gave Bob her hand.

“Don’t say ‘I told you so,’” she begged.

Bob smiled at her. “I won’t. You’ve been punished enough.”

“You’ll be all right now,” said Fred. He sat down near her.

“Have you got those letters from Kester?” Eleanor asked.

“Sure, right here.” Fred took them out of his breast pocket. “I hope you’ll forgive me for opening and answering them. I hated to, but I thought I should since you couldn’t.”

She held out her hand and received them. “What does he say?”

Fred chuckled. “A lot of stuff I won’t embarrass you by repeating but I guess you’re sentimental enough to appreciate it. He ought to be coming home soon.”

Eleanor sprang forward in her chair with such force that Bob put restraining hands on her shoulders. “Home?” she cried, “Is he hurt?”

“Quiet,” said Bob. He asked gently, “Eleanor, haven’t any of us had the grace to tell you the war’s over?”

“The war’s over? Oh, my God.” Eleanor covered her face with her hands and turned her head on the pillow behind her to hide the tears she was too weak to stop. When she could turn around Bob and Fred were looking guiltily at each other, shaking their heads.

“That anybody could have missed the racket of Armistice Day,” said Fred. He got up and leaned over Eleanor’s chair. “Go on and cry, sugar,” he added. “Don’t be ashamed. Everybody but you got rid of those tears a week ago.”

She managed to sob out, “Dad, the plantation is all clear. Cotton will drop now, won’t it?—but it doesn’t matter. I’ve done everything.”

“Yes, baby,” said Fred.

Chapter Eleven

1

E
leanor spent the rest of the winter waiting for Kester to come home. As by the first of the year she was quite recovered, she occupied her impatience by preparing Ardeith for his welcome. The house was polished and painted till only by its design and furniture could anybody have guessed it was nearly a hundred years old. Eleanor had the oak trees pruned and trimmed, and the gardens landscaped. Bringing electricians from New Orleans she had Kester’s bedroom equipped with a telephone connecting with the servants’ phones downstairs, a heater for chilly mornings and a concealed fan that in response to a push-button would send forth gusts of air on hot afternoons. She had his bathroom doubled in size, its walls and floor tiled in two shades of blue, and provided it with sybaritic devices—a gigantic blue bathtub, glassed-in shower, shaving mirror with indirect lights, a long dressing mirror in the door, a wilderness of faucets for sprays and steam, brushes, mats, and colored towels with his monogram. Remembering how he hated figures she installed an adding machine in his study. She bought him an automobile, long and gleaming, and had a new garage built for the protection of this and her own smart little roadster.

Looking around at what she had accomplished Eleanor was aglow with pride. Everything from the nursery to the boundary line of the plantation was a pattern of smooth mechanical order. In the house there was little to do that could not be done by the pressing of a button or the turning of a switch. Outdoors, except for cotton-picking, human hands were needed only for the guiding of machines.

She lived on her anticipation of Kester’s joy when he first saw the plantation, and tried to imagine his words. At first he would be speechless. Then he would turn to her. “Eleanor, I never dreamed it could be so beautiful! You did all this for me!” His delight would repay her for everything. She would not mind those weary days in the fields nor the influenza terror nor having worked herself nearly to death. They would have Ardeith, a model of prosperous efficiency, and would live here the rest of their lives together.

It was spring when Kester came. The gardens were shining with camellias and roses, magnolia flowers were starring the trees and in the fields the lines of young cotton were green from the road to the river. Eleanor met him in New Orleans. She stood in a shoving mob of people, not seeing any of them, and watched hundreds of soldiers, all of whom looked alike until she saw Kester. She caught sight of him before he saw her, Kester taking in the throng with his hello-everybody grin while his eyes searched for her, then when he saw her his grin became like a light of victory. Before she could struggle through the crowd to him he had somehow reached her, coming through the press of people as though he had leaped across it, and he had her in his arms. They were so starved for each other they might have been a thousand miles from any human company; Eleanor was conscious of nothing but his arms around her and his kisses on her mouth and eyes, and she never remembered what they said or if they said anything at all. She was simply aware that he was at home and that they would never be separated again.

After awhile—she never knew how long it was—she became conscious that bands were playing and people were cheering and a confusion of orders was being given around her. From somewhere she heard a group of shrill young voices triumphantly singing,

And it’s oh, boy,

It took the doughboy

To hang the wash on the Hindenburg Line!

She and Kester moved apart. They stood looking at each other, and began to laugh. He must parade and be cheered, he told her, no, he couldn’t help it, everybody seemed to have peace these days except the soldiers who had won the war. Eleanor had to relinquish him to the army, to his parents and his brother and sister, to what looked like thousands of friends. It seemed to her that half the population of New Orleans must have been waiting almost as eagerly as herself for Kester to come home. Though she had always enjoyed his popularity she wished now that nobody in town wanted to see him but herself.

But at last they came home to Ardeith.

Cameo met them at the train with the glittering car. Kester sprang forward and shook hands with Cameo, while Cameo beamed and stammered and looked him over and told him proudly, “Dey sho didn’t need to tell me, Mr. Kester, it was gonta take you to win dat war!”

“How’s Dilcy?” Kester inquired. “And Mamie?”

“Fine as pie, Mr. Kester. Just spoilin’ for a look at you.”

Kester took a look inside the car. “But didn’t you bring the children, Cameo?”

“Dey’s on de gallery waitin’, Mr. Kester. Miss Cornelia, she jes’ jumpin’ up and down, ’bout to bust.”

Kester gave Eleanor a wistful smile. “I suppose Philip won’t know me at all, will he?”

“He has a mental picture of you—I think something about eight feet high, clanking swords. Kester, do you like the car?”

Kester looked at it, “Holy jumping Joshua,” he gasped. He got in slowly, adjusted the mirrors, turned on the yellow fog lights and got out to examine the effect before turning them off again, and stared at her. “How much will she do?”

“Seventy or eighty. I’m not sure.”

“Like driving her?”

“I don’t know. This is yours.”

“Mine?”

She nodded happily. “I have another. A roadster.”

He looked around again, not yet used to it. “I thought I’d get a roadster. A little snappy one. I never dreamed of having anything like this.”

“You’re going to have lots you never dreamed of.” Eleanor squeezed his hand. “Don’t you want to drive it home? Cameo can sit in back with the bags.”

“No, let him do it. I’d rather talk to you.” They got into the back seat. Kester played with the inside light and the speaking-tube, raised and lowered the windows. “Why Eleanor, it’s a circus on wheels.”

Eleanor settled back. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Why yes, beautiful,” said Kester. He looked eagerly as they started to drive though Dalroy. “Why, Colston’s Dry Goods Store is all painted up. So’s the drug store. And all those new flower-beds in the park! Gee, the place looks prosperous.”

Eleanor chuckled. “Thirty-eight cent cotton, darling.”

“Thirty—eight—cents!” he gasped. “Did it really go that high?”

“Didn’t I write you? Or maybe I didn’t. That was about the time I got sick.”

“Are you all right now?” he asked anxiously.

“Oh yes, I never felt better in my life.”

“Lord, it’s good to be home!” Kester looked out, his eyes greedy for the sight of familiar things. The car turned into the river road, purring softly under his exclamations. “Eleanor, I can’t tell you how I’ve dreamed about this place. The wide shady streets and the palms with rosa montana climbing over them, the mules and Negroes in town on Saturday afternoons, the drug store with everybody getting cokes and lemonade, the darkies hoeing the cotton, watermelons and corn-bread and crab gumbo—there’s Ardeith, beyond the pomegranate trees!” His hand closed on hers. “How I’ve missed it,” he said in a low voice.

Eleanor was breathless in her desire to watch him as he saw Ardeith’s new beauty. Kester exclaimed,

“What gorgeous cotton! I never saw it so high this time of year.”

He watched the fields, his back to her. She tingled.

“Oughtn’t there to be some hoeing, about now?” asked Kester. “I haven’t seen any darkies yet.”

“I don’t use so many laborers now. We don’t need them.”

“But why not?” Before she could answer, he asked, “What’s that thing like an engine with claws, kicking up all that dust?”

“A cultivator. That’s why we don’t need so many Negroes.”

He turned back to her with an astonished little smile. “I reckon I’ll have to get used to them. That looks odd, somehow.”

“I wrote you.”

“But I don’t think I exactly imagined them here. Funny, isn’t it?”

“They do wonderful work.”

“Evidently they do. That’s fine cotton if I ever saw any.” His attention was back on the fields. “What are those little white houses with green trimmings, over near the river?”

“That’s where the Negroes live.”

“Holy smoke, you mean that’s the quarters?”

She nodded. “No more rickety cabins. They have screens and everything.”

“Amazing,” said Kester. He grinned. “I bet they’ve every one of them cut a hole in the screen door to let the cat in.”

“They tried that sort of thing at first. I put a stop to it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“If they’re happier with mosquitoes, why not let ’em have mosquitoes? It’s none of our business, you know, as long as they tend to the cotton.”

She laughed at him. The car turned into the avenue. “Ardeith,” said Kester. He said it reverently, looking around. “Eleanor, what’s happened to the oaks? They seem smaller than I remember.”

“They’ve been pruned down. I had a couple of tree-surgeons attend to them.”

“Oh. The lawns are kind of—formal, aren’t they?”

“The flowers were running wild. I brought a landscaper here to do them over.”

The car stopped in front of the house. Kester sprang out. There was a shout from the gallery. Cornelia had said “Father?” tentatively, then as he ran toward her she screamed “Father!” and sprang to him in an ecstasy of delight. Philip, though he did not know him, was excited too, for Eleanor had told him so much about the wonderful man who was coming, and Kester stood up holding them both, each on an arm. They were all talking at once.

“Look at my new dress,” said Cornelia. “It’s got pink spots and a sash.”

“Baby, how you’ve grown!” Kester was exclaiming. “Philip, do you know who I am?”

“Sojer,” said Philip, “and father.”

He carried them into the house. Eleanor followed. She found Kester down on his knees in the parlor, an open suitcase on the floor beside him, from which he was taking such an assortment of dolls and toys that the children were shouting with glee. Eleanor smiled as she watched. The children were so pretty and so healthy, any man would be proud of them. And Kester certainly was. At last, when they had scampered away to show their treasures to Dilcy, he got to his feet.

“It’s such fun to see them be persons,” he said, “not babies any more. Eleanor, isn’t Cornelia the loveliest child you ever saw?”

“She knows it, too,” Eleanor returned. “If we aren’t careful she’s going to spend her life in front of a looking-glass. How do you like Philip?”

“I like him enormously. But I’ve got to get acquainted all over again with both of them.”

She slipped her hand through the bend of his arm. “Come with me, Kester. I’ve got so much to show you, I hardly know where to start.”

He looked around hungrily. “Ardeith,” he said. “I want to see every room, every chair of it. Let’s tell Cameo to take the bags upstairs.” He took a step toward the wall and turned back to her with puzzled eyes. “Why Eleanor, where’s the bellcord?”

“In the attic.” Dropping his arm she went to the black button-studded rectangle in the corner and took down the telephone receiver. “Bessie? Tell Cameo to take Mr. Kester’s things to his room. And have Mamie make a pot of fresh coffee and send it up. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Kester was staring. “What—in the name—of conscience—is—that thing?”

“A house-telephone. They save an endless lot of running about. Come along.”

She guided him through the house, showing him the convenience of buttons and switches, and the calculating machines in his office. Kester looked at everything with amazement.

“I don’t suppose you’re so much interested in the kitchen,” she said, “or the laundry, but would you like to take a peek?”

“Why—yes,” said Kester.

Eleanor opened the kitchen door. Kester stared at the expanse of white tiles, the curtained windows, Mamie presiding over the electric stove.

“It looks like a restaurant,” he said in a low voice.

“Mighty fine doin’s we got,” Mamie announced to him.

“I’ll say you have. But Mamie, can you cook on that thing—I mean, cook the way you used to?”

“Well sah, it was kind of funny at first. But it’s mighty nice and clean, Mr. Kester. Right highclass, after you gets used to it.”

“I suppose it must be,” said Kester.

He and Eleanor went back into the main hall. “Don’t you like it?” Eleanor exclaimed.

“Why yes, yes, of course. Only it’s all so new. It’s like coming to a different place. I’ll have to get used to it, as Mamie said.”

They went up the spiral staircase and into Kester’s bedroom. Eleanor proudly pushed the button that controlled the hidden fan.

“I can’t say anything yet,” he murmured. “I’m too astonished. I feel like a horse and buggy.”

She laughed. Kester crossed the room and opened the bathroom door.

“For the love of the Lord,” he breathed. “Eleanor, this isn’t mine!”

“Yes it is. Watch.” She pressed a button. A brush came out of the wall, spinning, and she showed him how to hold his foot under it so as to get his shoe brushed without stooping. She displayed the faucets and mirrors and lights. Kester stood in the middle of it like a child before a baffling toy.

“All this,” he marveled, “just to take a bath. Have you got one like it?”

She nodded. “You can see mine later.”

There was a knock, and Cameo entered with the coffee-tray and the old silver service. “I could stand a cup of coffee,” said Kester. “My head’s positively addled.”

They sat down by the bedside table and Eleanor began to pour the coffee. “Kester, tell me what you think of it!”

“Why—everything must be very convenient,” he returned slowly. “I mean once you learn how to work all these things.”

“Oh yes, it is. Living here is so easy now. Everybody has so much more time.”

Kester stroked the handle of the silver coffee-pot. “It’s good to see all this again, and drink Mamie’s coffee. She makes the best coffee on earth. Why Eleanor!” he broke off.

“What’s the trouble, darling?”

“Where’s the dent?”

“Oh, that! You had me scared for a minute. I had it straightened.”

“Oh, I see. You had it straightened.” Kester set down his cup and stood up. “Eleanor, run along, will you? I’d like to get washed up before dinner.”