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Half an hour later he brought her a tray, a dainty one prepared by his mother, and set it upon a table close beside the bed.
“Here you are, dearie,” he said gayly. “Jellied chicken, cold as ice, and iced tea and ice-cold salad. Not a thing hot except some nice crisp toast. You’ll feel like running a footrace after you eat it, Lena!”
She spoke without moving, keeping her face away from him. “Are those women still downstairs?”
“Who?”
“Your grandmother and that big girl—the awful one.”
“You don’t mean—”
“I asked you if they’re still in the house.”
“They’re just goin’ home, Lena. Martha told me to tell you how sorry she is you feel the heat so badly. Won’t you eat something now, please, dear?”
“No, thank you.”
“Please! You’ll feel all right again if you’ll eat something, and tomorrow morning we’ll drive out to Ornaby Addition. Then you’ll feel like a queen, Lena; because it’s all yours and you’ll see what it’s goin’ to do for us.”
“Do you think it will get us away from here?” she asked in a dead voice.
“Well, by that time,” Dan answered cheerfully, “I expect maybe you won’t want to get away.”
“ ‘By that time,’ ” she said, quoting him dismally. “You mean it’s going to be a long time?”
“Lena, I wish you’d just look at this tray. I know if you’d only look at it, you couldn’t help eating. You’d—”
“Oh, hush!” she moaned, and struck her pillow a futile blow. “Someone told me once that you people out here always were trying to get everybody to eat, that you thought just eating would cure everything. I suppose you and all your family have been eating away, downstairs there, just the same as ever. It makes me die to think of it! I’ve had delirium in fevers, but I never was delirious enough to imagine a place where there wasn’t some mercy in the heat! There isn’t any here; it’s almost dusk and hotter than ever. I couldn’t any more eat than if I were some poor thing cooking alive on a grill. What on earth do you want me to eat for?”
“Well, dearie,” he said placatively. “I think it would strengthen you and make you feel so much better, maybe you’d be willing to—to—” He hesitated, faltering.
“To what?”
“Well, you see grandma’s so terribly old—and just these last few months she’s broken so—we know we can’t hope to see much more of her, dear; and so we make quite a little fuss over her when she’s able to come here. I did hope maybe you’d feel able to go down with me to tell her good night.”
At that, Lena struck the pillow again, and then again and again; she beat it with a listless desperation. “Didn’t you understand what I said to you about her?”
“Oh, yes; but I know that was just a little nervousness, Lena; you didn’t really mean it. I know you feel differently about it already.”
“No!” she cried, interrupting him sharply. “No! No!” And then, in her pain, her voice became so passionately vehement that Dan was alarmed. “No! No! No!”
“Lena! I’m afraid they’ll hear you downstairs.”
“What do I care!” she cried so loudly that Martha Shelby, in the twilight of the yard below, on her way to the gate, paused and half turned; and Dan saw her through the open window. “What do I care!” Lena screamed. “What do I care!”
“Oh, dear me!” he groaned, and though Martha hurried on he was sure that she had heard.
“I don’t care!”
“Oh, dear me!” he groaned again, and went to close the door which he had thoughtlessly left open when he came into the room. But, to his dismay, before he closed it he heard Mrs. Savage’s still sonorous voice in the hall downstairs: “No, don’t bother him. Harlan’s enough to get me home. But if I had a daughter-in-law with tantrums I’d mighty soon cure her.”
At that point Dan shut the door hurriedly, and went back to the bedside. “Lena,” he said, in great distress, “if you won’t eat anything, I just don’t see what I can do!”
“You don’t?” she asked, and turned to look at him. “It seems to me nothing could be simpler. You know perfectly well what you can do.”
“What?”
“Take me out of this. Keep your promise to me and take me abroad.”
“But I can’t, dearie,” he explained. “You see I didn’t realize it was a promise exactly, and now it’s just out of the question. You see everything we’ve got is in Ornaby Addition and so—”
“Then sell it.”
“What? Why, I wouldn’t have anything left at all if I did that at this stage of the work. You see—”
“Then put a mortgage on it. People can always get money by mortgages.”
Dan rubbed his forehead. “I’ve already got a mortgage on it,” he said. “That’s where the money came from I’m workin’ with now.” He sighed, then went on more cheerfully. “But just wait till you see it, Lena. We’ll drive out there first thing tomorrow morning and you’ll understand right away what a big thing you and I own together. You just wait! Why, two or three weeks from now—maybe only two or three days from now—you’ll be as enthusiastic over Ornaby as I am!” He leaned over her, smiling, and took her hand. “Honestly, Lena, I don’t want to brag—I wouldn’t want to brag to you, the last person in the world—but honestly, I believe it’s goin’ to be the biggest thing that’s ever been done in this town. You see if we can only get the city limits extended and run a boulevard out there—”
But here she startled him; she snatched her hand away and burst into a convulsive sobbing that shook every inch of her. “Oh, dear!” she wailed. “I’m trapped! I’m trapped!”
This was all he could get from her during the next half hour; that she was “trapped,” repeated over and over in a heartbroken voice at intervals in the sobbing; and Dan, agonized at the sight and sound of such poignantly genuine suffering, found nothing to offer in the way of effective solace. He tried to pet her, to stroke her forehead, but at every such impulse of his she tossed away from his extended hand. Then, in desperation, he fell back upon renewed entreaties that she would eat, tempting her with appetizing descriptions of the food he had brought and, when these were so unsuccessful that she made him carry the untouched tray out into the hall and leave it there, he returned to make further prophecies of the restorative powers of Ornaby Addition.
Once she saw Ornaby, he said, she would be fairly in love with it; and he was so unfortunate as to add that he knew she would soon get used to his grandmother and like her.
Lena was growing somewhat more composed until he spoke of his grandmother; but instantly, as if the relation between this cause and its effect had already established itself as permanently automatic, she uttered a loud cry of pain, the sobbing again became convulsive; and Dan perceived that for a considerable time to come it would be better to omit even the mention of Mrs. Savage in his wife’s presence.
Darkness came upon the room where Lena tossed and lamented, and the young husband walked up and down until she begged him to stop. He sat by an open window, helplessly distressed to find that whatever he did seemed to hurt her; for, when he had been silent awhile she wailed piteously, “Oh, heavens! Why can’t you say something?” And when he began to speak reassuringly of the climate, telling her that the oppressive weather was only “a little hot spell,” she tossed and moaned the more.
So the long evening passed in slow, hot hours laden with emotions that also burned. From the window Dan saw the family carriage return from Mrs. Savage’s; the horses shaking themselves in their lathered harness when they halted on the driveway to let Harlan out. He went indoors, to the library as usual, Dan guessed vaguely; and after a while Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant came from the house and walked slowly up and down the path that led through the lawn to the gate. They were “taking the air”—or as much of it as there was to be taken—and, walking, thus together, the two figures seemed to express a congeniality Dan had never before noticed with attention, although he had been aware of it all his life. Both of them had retained their slenderness, and in the night were so youthful looking that they might have been taken for a pair of young lovers, except for the peacefulness seeming to be theirs. This emanation of a serenity between them suddenly became perceptible to their son as a surprising thing; and he looked down upon them wonderingly.
There came a querulous inquiry from the bed. “What on earth are you staring at?”
“Only father and mother. They’re outdoors coolin’ off.”
“Good heavens!” Lena said. “Cooling off!”
“You’re feelin’ better now, aren’t you, Lena?” he asked hopefully.
“ ‘Better!’ ” she wailed. “Oh, heavens!”
Dan rested his elbows on the windowsill, and his chin on his hands. “They’re comin’ in, now,” he said after a while. “They’ve had their little evening walk in the yard together. They nearly always do that when the weather isn’t too cold.”
“ ‘Cold?’ I suppose this place gets just as cold in winter as it does hot in summer!”
“It does get pretty cold here in winter sometimes,” the thoughtless Dan said, with a touch of pride. “Why, last February—”
“Oh, heavens!” Lena wailed; and she began to weep again.
About midnight she was quiet, and Dan, going near her, discovered that she drowsed. His foot touched something upon the carpet, and he picked up the string of artificial pearls, put it upon the table beside the bed, then tiptoed out of the room, closing the door with great care to make no noise. The house was silent and solidly dark as he went down the broad stairway and opened the front door to let himself out into the faint illumination of the summer night. It was a night profoundly hushed and motionless; and within it, enclosed in heat, the town lay prostrate.
Sighing heavily, the young husband walked to and fro upon the short grass of the lawn, wondering what had “happened” to Lena—as he thought of it—to upset her so; wondering, too, what had happened to himself, that since he had married her she had most of the time seemed to him to be, not the Lena he thought he knew, but an inexplicable stranger. This was a mystery beyond his experience, and he could only sigh and shake his inadequate head; meanwhile pacing beneath the midnight stars. But they were neither puzzled nor surprised, those experienced stars, so delicately bright in the warm sky, for they had looked down upon uncounted other young husbands in his plight and pacing as he did.
By and by he stood still, aware of another presence in the dimness of the neighbouring yard. The only sound in all the world seemed to be a minute tinkling and plashing of water where the stoic swan maintained himself at his duty while other birds slept; but upon the stone rim of the fountain Dan thought he discerned a white figure sitting. He went to the fence between the two lawns to make sure, and found that he was right; a large and graceful woman sat there, leaning over and drawing one hand meditatively to and fro through the water.
“Martha?” he said in a low voice.
She looked up, said “Dan!” under her breath, and came to the fence. “Why, you poor thing! You’re still in that heavy long coat!”
“Am I?” he asked vaguely. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“ ‘Hadn’t noticed?’ In this weather!”
“It is fairly hot,” he said, as though this circumstance had just been called to his attention.
“Then why don’t you take it off?”
“My coat?” he returned absently. “I don’t mind it.”
“I do,” Martha said. “You don’t need to bother about talking to me with your coat off, do you? It’s only a dozen years or so since we hid our shoes and stockings in the harness closet in your stable and ran off barefoot to go wading in the street after a thunderstorm. Take it off.”
“Well—” He complied, explaining, “I just came out to get cool.”
“So did I; but I don’t believe it can be done, Dan. I believe this is the worst night for sheer hotness we’ve had in two or three years. I haven’t felt it so much since the day I landed in New York from Cherbourg, summer before last. I’ll never forget that day!”
“In New York?” he asked, astonished.
“I should say so! I suppose I felt it more because I was just from abroad, but I think people from our part of the country suffer fearfully from the heat in New York, anyhow.”
“I believe they do,” he said thoughtfully. “And New York people suffer from the heat when they come out here. That must be it.”
“Do you think so?” She appeared to be surprised. “I don’t see how New York people could mind the heat anywhere else very much after what they get at home.”
“Oh, but they do, Martha! They suffer terribly from heat if they come out here, for instance. You see they don’t spend the summers in New York. They either go abroad in summer or else to the country.”
“Does she?” Martha asked quickly; but corrected herself. “Do they?”
“Yes,” he said, seeming to be unaware of the correction. “That’s why it upsets her so. You see—”
“Yes?”
“Well—” he said, hesitating. “It—it does kind of upset her. It—” He paused, then added lamely, “It’s just the heat, though. That’s all seems to be really the matter; she can’t stand the weather.”
“She’ll get used to it,” Martha said gently. “You mustn’t worry, Dan.”
“Oh, I don’t. In a few days she’ll probably see how lovely it really is here, and she’ll begin to enjoy it and be more like herself. Everything’ll be all right in a day or so; I’m sure of that.”
“Yes, Dan.”
“Of course just now, what with the heat and all and everybody strangers to her, why, it’s no wonder it makes her feel a little upset. Anybody would be, but in a few days from now”—he hesitated, and concluded, with a somewhat lame insistence, “Well, it’ll all be entirely different.”
“Yes, Dan,” she said again, but there was an almost imperceptible tremble in her voice, and his attention was oddly caught by it.
All his mind had been upon the suffering little bride, but there was something in the quality of this tremulousness in Martha’s voice that made him think about Martha, instead. And suddenly he looked at her with the same wonder he had felt earlier this queer evening, when he noticed for the first time that emanation of serenity between his father and mother. For there seemed to be something about Martha, too, that he had known familiarly all his life, but had never thought of before.
There is indeed a light that is light in darkness, and these strange moments of revelation, when they come, are brought most often by the night. Daylight, showing too many things, may afterwards doubt them, but they are real and not to be forgotten. They are only moments; and yet, while this one had its mystic little life, Dan was possessed in part by the feeling, altogether vague, that somewhere a peculiar but indefinable mistake had been made by somebody not identified to him.
Moreover, here was matter more curious still: this thing he had all his life known about Martha, but had never realized until now, made her in a moment a woman new to him, so that she seemed to stand there, facing him across the iron fence, a new Martha. He had no definition in words for what he felt, nor sought one; but it was as if he found himself in possession of an ineffable gift, inexpressibly valuable and shining vaguely in the darkness. This shining, wan and touching, seemed to come from Martha herself; and this newness of hers, that was yet so old, put a glamour about her. The dim, kind face and shimmering familiar figure were beautiful, he saw, never before having had consciousness of her as beautiful; but what most seemed to glow upon him out of the glamour about her was the steadfastness within her; for that was the jewel worn by the very self of her and shining upon him in the night.
“Martha—” he said in a low voice.
“Yes, Dan?”
“You’ve always been such a friend of mine, I—I—I’ve never said much about how I feel about it. I haven’t got anything I wouldn’t sooner part with, Martha.”
“I hope so,” she said gently, and bowed her head in a kind of meekness. “I hope so, Dan, but—” She stopped.
“But what, Martha?”
“I’m afraid,” she said slowly, “your wife isn’t going to like me.”
“Oh, but she will,” he returned, trying to put heartiness into this assurance. “She’s bound to! Why, everybody in the world likes you, Martha.”
“No; I had the feeling as soon as I spoke to her that she never would, Dan. It was just a feeling, but I’m afraid it’ll turn out so. That doesn’t mean I won’t try my best to make her.”
“You won’t need to try. Of course just now she’s suffering so terribly, poor little thing—”
“Poor Dan!” Martha said, as he stopped speaking and sighed instead. “You never could bear to see anybody suffer. The trouble is it always makes you suffer more than the person that’s doing the original suffering.”
“Oh, no. But I don’t know what on earth to do for her. Of course, in a few days, when she begins to see what it’s really like here, and I get her to understand a little more about the Addition—”
He stopped, startled to hear his name called in a querulous little voice from an upstairs window.
“She’s awake,” he said in a whisper.
“Who on earth are you talking with out there?” called the querulous voice.
“Good night,” he whispered, moving away hurriedly; but, looking back, he saw that Martha remained at the separating iron fence, leaning upon it now; and he could feel, rather than see, that she was not looking at him, but that her head was again bowed in the same meekness with which she had said she hoped he prized her feeling for him.