This Side of Glory (8 page)

But he was delighted with his fatherhood, sent telegrams to everybody he could think of and for a week kept open house, serving wine and eggnog in the parlor to a stream of congratulating visitors as though it had been New Year’s. Denis and Lysiane came up to see the baby—“Well, well, now where did you get this?”—and Fred, who could not get away until the following Sunday, came up at Kester’s urgent invitation, bringing Molly and Eleanor’s sister Florence, and they spent a merry day admiring the squirming pink object that was still called “the baby,” for though Kester and Eleanor had discussed dozens of possible names none of them seemed quite right. Eleanor lay in the great fourposter under its crimson canopy, vastly enjoying her homage. She was glad to see her parents; they were so frank, so strong, laughing at the elegance of her surroundings and reminding her that she had been born in a tent. Here in the legended quiet of Ardeith they seemed to Eleanor refreshing, like a wind in summer, and she thought how proud she was that she could pass on to her child such an unconquerable heritage as hers. They took the night train back to town. Though she was tired, she told the nurse she wanted to speak to Kester before she went to sleep.

The nurse brought him and left them alone together. As Kester sat down by the bed Eleanor told him she knew what she wanted to name the baby. “I’d like to name her for a very courageous woman,” she said. “My father’s mother. Unless you mind.”

Kester was sitting on the bedstep. He laid his head on the pillow by hers. “My dearest girl, why did you think I’d mind?”

“Dad was illegitimate—had you forgotten that?—and you’re so conservative about some things.”

“Why no, darling, I hadn’t forgotten it. Something about a carpetbagger during Reconstruction.”

“I’ve never thought much about it until now,” said Eleanor. “She was a poor creature who’d never had a pretty dress nor very many square meals until she took the only chance she’d ever had to get them. He deserted her before dad was born. When dad was a child she used to take in washing, and somehow she brought him up and made him go to school. She couldn’t read, she didn’t know any of the sort of things we know, but I think she must have been splendid. She died when I was a little girl, as triumphantly as any soldier who had won a battle, for she knew dad was a great man and she had made him one. She had the courage that makes the mothers of heroes. I’d like to name my daughter for her.”

Kester smiled. “I suspect you’re very like her. What was her name?”

“Corrie May Upjohn.”

He took a long breath. “Eleanor, forgive me, but I think that’s atrocious.”

“So do I, but can’t we arrange it somehow?”

“Isn’t Corrie sometimes short for Cornelia?” he suggested after a moment’s consideration.

“Cornelia. I like that. Let’s name her Cornelia.”

“All right.”

Eleanor moved to rest her cheek against his hand as it lay on the pillow. They went on talking about the baby. Kester began to outline her future. He wanted Cornelia to have a hobby-horse with a real hair mane and tail. Eleanor began to picture her as she would come down the spiral staircase in bridal white.

“And maybe take her wedding trip in a flying-machine,” Kester suggested.

Eleanor shivered. “And scare me to death. Do you suppose they’ll be practical by then?”

“Why not? Automobiles weren’t practical twenty years ago. Why, Eleanor, she may live to see anything—even rockets going to the moon.”

Eleanor could not help laughing at his romantic imagination.

“Well, she might,” he persisted. “The world’s getting to be an amazing place. Did you read the list of inventions they made speeches about at the German Kaiser’s silver jubilee?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It was a gorgeous celebration—a sort of handshaking-and-eternal-friendship party for all the kings and queens and writers and scientists in Europe. The Kaiser combined the anniversary celebration with the marriage of his daughter, and the bridesmaids were English, Rumanian, Russian and Italian princesses—to symbolize the unity of Europe, you know—and the visiting kings made speeches and called the Kaiser Europe’s man of peace. You needn’t laugh at what I said about rockets, either. The Kaiser conferred the title ‘Greatest German of the Twentieth Century’ on Count von Zeppelin.”

“Who’s he?”

“He invented the dirigible balloon. And they can go anywhere.”

“Not to the moon, stupid. When was all this?”

“Last summer. Stop being so practical. Don’t you like the idea of your daughter’s growing up in a world that’s turning into a sort of wonderland?”

“I don’t know. It’s rather frightening. But I do think I’d like to go up in a balloon.”

“So would I,” Kester agreed. In the ancient cradle near the bedside Cornelia began to kick. Eleanor kissed Kester’s hand as it lay against her face. She was very tired, and drowsy, and very happy indeed.

Chapter Four

1

E
leanor loved the baby very much, but she was not by nature passionately maternal, and she had never dreamed of such abject adoration as Kester poured out on his small daughter. He lavished toys and clothes upon her, listening to her every gurgle as a sign of intelligent notice, and he not only thought Cornelia the most remarkable child in the world but told everybody so in terms that made Eleanor protest.

“Kester, you’ve got to stop it!” she exclaimed one evening when they came home after having taken supper with the Purcells. “When Cornelia was born she was not pink and white and dimpled, she was red as a bricklayer’s neck. All babies are.”

“Cornelia wasn’t,” he insisted. He was on his knees building up the parlor fire.

“All babies are born ugly,” Eleanor returned, “and practically all parents say
their
baby was the one exception in history, and I’ve always laughed at them and declared that if I ever had a child I wasn’t going to talk about it like that—”

“You’ve got such a factual mind,” said Kester. He got up and brushed off his hands. The fire crackled.

Kester took a chair on the opposite side of the hearth from Eleanor, leaning back in it lazily, his hands clasped behind his head. He was such a dear, she thought, nobody could ever succeed in convincing him that the earth was the dull and monotonous place most people found it. Kester had made her life so rich; it was January, almost two years to the day since they had first seen each other, and it seemed to Eleanor that nothing that happened to her before then was of any importance except as one of the steps by which she had moved toward him. She smiled reproachfully as she noticed his day’s mail still on the side table unopened.

“Is that the way you used to treat my letters?” she asked, glancing at the pile.

“I used to haunt the box waiting for them,” said Kester, “and carry them around to peek at while I was riding the cotton.” He reached for the mail and began to look it over. “Here’s one from my sister Alice. She has no literary talents, but she feels it a matter of family duty to write me once a month. What’s this one that’s been opened?”

“That’s addressed to Mr. and Mrs.,” said Eleanor. “It’s from Mrs. Neal Sheramy reminding us we’re having dinner with them at Silverwood tomorrow.”

“Oh yes. I’m going with Neal after dinner to help him buy a car. These others are bills, and something from the bank in New Orleans. See what Alice has to say while I look at them.”

He tossed the letter into her lap and Eleanor opened it. Alice’s news, as he had foretold, was not interesting. Alice was well, her husband was well, it had been a rainy week in New Orleans, and as Alice said “Mother had a large party Wednesday to play bridge,” Eleanor assumed that Kester’s parents were also well. She had started to replace the letter in its envelope when Kester sprang to his feet with an exclamation.

She looked up at him, and the pages slipped out of her hand.

Kester was holding the letter from his bank in New Orleans. His eyes seemed all of a sudden hollow, and he stared at the sheet as though it told him he had been unwittingly eating poison. She gasped, “Kester, what is it?”

For a moment Kester did not answer. Then, in a strange, unbelieving voice, he said, “The bank is threatening to take Ardeith.”

Eleanor heard a sound come out of her throat. It was not a word. It was merely a noise, like the croak of a frog in a swamp. She felt dizzy. It was as though a blow had distorted her senses, and she had just enough wit left to remind herself not to speak or move now because in a moment everything would come back to its place and she would be glad she had not done anything foolish. She could see Ardeith all at once, the oaks and the palms and the house, the rows of cotton, the cabins and the Negroes. She saw Kester, and her baby who was going to come down the spiral staircase in a wedding veil. And strangely, she saw the print of the horseshoe on the step of the
stairs, and the dent in the silver coffee-pot, and Kester’s little knife with his name engraved on the handle because he was always losing things.

At last—she did not know how long she had been staring at him —Kester bent and kissed her forehead. She heard him say,

“I’m sorry, darling. I shouldn’t have worried you. I’ll go down to New Orleans and get an extension.”

Eleanor put up her hand to her forehead with a curious feeling of resentment as though a stranger had touched her with his lips. Things were not coming back to their places. She said vaguely, “An extension? How do you know you can get it?”

He shrugged. By a great effort she focused her attention upon him, and saw that he looked normal again, the untroubled and delightful young man who had never failed to have what he wanted fall into his hands. “I always do, sweetheart,” he assured her. “This is just a form letter. I shouldn’t have let it scare me.” He continued with soothing cheerfulness. “My dearest, don’t glare at me like that! I’m sorry I frightened you. Didn’t you know I’m always hopelessly in debt? That I’m the bad child coddled by the Southeastern Exchange Bank? That my one talent is being able to borrow money from anybody?” As though bewildered by her hurt amazement, he added wonderingly, “Didn’t you know me, darling, when you married me?”

In a voice so cold and hard that her word dropped like a lump of ice on his self-confidence, Eleanor said,

“No.”

Kester did not answer. He took a step backward. It seemed to Eleanor that this moment was like a blade that cut through her life, dividing all that lay ahead of it from all that lay behind. She stared at Kester through the minute of transition, seeing him with the clarity with which one sometimes sees through pain. She saw him as though for the first time, Kester who had been given everything and so had never been faced with the necessity of deserving anything. Blessed with an honored name, a great inheritance, compelling personal gifts, Kester had never thought of guarding what he received so easily. And money was one thing—perhaps the only important thing in his life—that was not subject to his charm. So Kester had refused to look at it. He preferred to make believe that its demands were not relentless. But that, in the code to which Eleanor had been bred, was unforgivable.

She remembered the tent in the levee camp, and her father’s implacable voice. “I’m not talking about anything he’s done. I’m talking about the kind of person he is.”

She got to her feet slowly, feeling stiff as though she had been sitting still for hours. Kester was still regarding her with a hurt surprise.

“I don’t understand,” said Eleanor. “What have we been spending?”

He shrugged. “I’ve wondered myself.”

“How much money do you owe?”

“I haven’t,” said Kester, “the faintest idea.”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” she exclaimed. “I’m not a child. Where did you get it?”

He made a wide gesture, his hand taking in the room. “Ardeith. Funny how it piles up on you.”

“You mean you’ve mortgaged it piece by piece?”

“Something like that. The place was mortgaged a little when I took it over. My grandmother had kept it clear of debt, but father never had much more sense about money than I have. Since he’s retired he’s lived on the income of some sugar land across the river. It’s rented.”

“But how did you do it?”

“How does anybody do it?” he answered patiently. “I haven’t paid much attention. You borrow on the cotton when it’s planted. You think the crop will pay it off but you need the money for something else, so you give a piece of land as security. Then all of a sudden something happens to make you realize every teaspoon in the house is carrying all it can stand. Eleanor,” he exclaimed, “don’t look at me as if I’d killed somebody! I tell you it’s all right. There’s some pine land across the road, not worth a picayune, but I can make Mr. Robichaux think it is.”

She looked him up and down, standing opposite him with her anger like a cold lump in her breast. “Tell me, Kester.” Her voice was hard.
“How much do you owe on this plantation?”

“I told you,” he retorted, “I didn’t know.”

He stood by the fireplace, his elbow on the mantel. She took a step nearer. “Kester,” she asked, “were you in debt when we married?”

He tilted his shoulder. “I’m always in debt. It’s my normal state.”

His casual answer flung her into a fury. “You were in debt when you took the best suite in the hotel for our honeymoon?” she cried. “When you were tipping bellboys a dollar for bringing you a paper? When you served sixteen-year-old Bourbon to your guests? When you brought Cornelia handmade dresses and imported—”

“Shut up,” said Kester quietly. “And stop screaming.”

“I didn’t mean to scream. But suppose I do? You can’t keep this a secret forever. That we’ve been living on money that didn’t belong to you. On your smile and your dishonesty. Funny,” she added. “My father told me all this before I married you.”

“Then why didn’t you listen to him?” asked Kester. He walked over to the liquor cabinet at the side of the room and began pouring himself a drink. His hand was steady, and even when he asked his last question his voice had not changed.

“I didn’t listen to him,” said Eleanor, “because I loved you. I loved you so much I thought nothing else mattered. But he knew me better than I knew myself. He knew I’d rather scrub floors than spend money that wasn’t mine to spend.”

Kester did not answer. He was quietly sipping whiskey from a little glass. She wondered if the whiskey had been paid for.

Eleanor twisted her hands together, feeling crushed under the burden of her disenchantment. “Some day,” she said, “you may know what it has done to me to find this out about you.”

He gave her an oddly intent look across his glass, and smiled, a bitter little smile. “I always thought,” he said slowly, “you were the one person in the world who’d never let me down.”

“What have I done except tell you the truth about yourself?”

“Will you have the kindness to go upstairs?” Kester asked.

His voice was so icily polite that Eleanor turned without answering and went out. She climbed the spiral staircase and went into her own room. Through the front windows she could see the draperies of moss swinging from the trees and the little feathers of fog blowing in the dark around them. She sat down by the fire, wishing she was given to tears, and wishing it was daylight so she could go out and walk for miles and miles. Any physical reaction would have been easier than merely bearing this silence and this smothering weight of disappointment.

After a long time she heard Kester climb the stairs and go into his room across the hall. The sound of his door closing gave her a devastating sense of loneliness. There had never been a night before when they had parted in anger. At first she would not believe that he intended to go to bed without speaking to her again. But she heard nothing else. She wished she had never asked that they sleep in separate rooms. If he had had to go to bed in here they would have talked to each other, and they could not have helped saying they were sorry. She stood up, almost ready to go to him and ask his forgiveness. But she stayed where she was; it was not her fault the plantation was mortgaged or that they had lived in luxury on money they had no right to spend. Eleanor resolutely began taking off her clothes. She opened the windows and got into bed.

She could not go to sleep. She tumbled about, unable to get warm and then unable to find a comfortable place to lie, while her mind was blurred with what for a long time was merely an unthinking confusion. The little clock on the bedside table ticked loudly. The clock had to be there so she would know when to go to Cornelia, but its ticking worried her nerves. Slowly, her unhappiness began to turn to self-analysis. She told herself that she had merely hurt Kester without suggesting any solution of the problem, and in the fierce inner light of sleeplessness she knew that she could not endure to hurt him because she loved him with a passion that had in no way diminished. She wanted him and she would want him as long as she lived. Whatever price she had to pay for her life with him, she would not relinquish any chance to recapture what they had had together. The next step ahead of her was plain: she was going down to New Orleans and make the bankers tell her exactly the plight of Ardeith. If there was any salvation to be had she would wrest it from them with every shred of strength she possessed, because if she recognized Kester’s faults it was only with a violent desire to save him from their consequences.

There was a faint little cry from the nursery. Eleanor sat up. It must be after four o’clock. Usually she set the alarm, but tonight she had forgotten it. Hurriedly putting on a bathrobe she went down the hall to the nursery, where Cornelia lay in her crib protesting the world’s neglect. As she felt Cornelia cuddle against her in warm helpless trust Eleanor thought how much she loved her. She was not demonstrative like Kester, but she gave her child the simple, quiet love that meant protection. Remembering the unconquerable grandmother for whom Cornelia was named she smiled to herself. Kester had the grace born of many self-assured generations, but she had something else, the pitiless strength of a race that had fought its way through the dirt and cruelty of the poor, and she liked to think Cornelia was drawing in something of this harsh vigor with her mother’s milk.

Eleanor put the baby back into the cradle and covered her up. Out in the hall again, she hesitated, then went to Kester’s room, opening the door softly. His clothes were tossed about on the chairs and floor as usual, and he was fast asleep. Wondering resentfully if any crisis could disturb the healthy rhythm of his life, Eleanor nevertheless bent down and kissed him. He stirred slightly, but did not wake up. She left him, and went back to her room.

But the compulsion to immediate activity still would not let her rest, so she took a coat from her armoire and drawing it around her she crept down the chilly dark stairway to the little room Kester called his study, where there was a big roller-top desk piled with ledgers. The desk drawers were so stuffed with papers that it was hard to open them. Eleanor pulled out a drawer and began to go through its contents —circulars, restaurant menus, old letters, racing forms, ticket stubs, theater programs, bills, bills, bills. With hands that were stiff with cold she went to work sorting the bills.