Part 20 (2/2)
”Effie, wasn't that Mrs. Jastrow I saw at the cemetery yesterday with her head done up in a black veil--c.r.a.pe, too? I have just recalled it.”
Effie nodded.
”One would have thought,” I resented, ”that she was one of the family.”
”Ah, that's it; she thinks she is.”
”One of the family? Oh! you don't mean that Forrie----Where was Lily then?” I demanded.
”She wouldn't come, of course, not being recognized as one of the family and yet counting herself one.”
”But, explain ... how could she? I thought that was broken off long ago.”
”When mother was first taken,” Effie agreed, ”but you see she made such a dead set at him, she had to keep it up somehow; she couldn't admit that Forrie hadn't wanted her. So they made it up between them, Lily and her mother, I mean, that she and Forrie had really been engaged, but it had been broken off because Forrie couldn't marry so long as mother----”
She broke off with tears again, remembering how mother was now.
”That was two years ago; you don't mean to say they've kept it up all the time?”
”They've had to. You see Lily hadn't been careful about not getting herself talked about with Forester. Oh, not scandal, of course, but you know how it is when a girl is crazy after a man; everybody gets to hear of it. And then they had to make so much of the engagement never coming to anything on mother's account, it quite spoiled Lily's chances, and you know, Forester....”
”Oh, he was taken in by it, no doubt; it was something to sentimentalize over and be self-sacrificing about.”
”Well, of course, he couldn't quite abandon the poor girl; and she really _is_ fond of him.”
”And perfectly safe to philander with. Well, now that he has no one depending on him I suppose he will marry her!”
”That's what is worrying me,” protested Effie; ”you see it all depends on whether I go on depending on him.” She broke down over that. Mother hadn't wanted Forester to marry Lily Jastrow, and everybody by the mouth of Almira Jewett, had thought it was Effie's duty to keep him from it if she could.
”And I could, by just staying on. It's mother's money in the business, your's and mine as much as his, and this house ... it's partly ours ...
if we stay in it.”
”Well if you _want_ to....”
Effie came over and sobbed on my shoulder, ”Oh, I don't,” she said. ”I suppose it is horrid and selfish. I'm fond of Forrie, but I want to do things in the world ... like you have ... and I want to marry and have babies. Oh, oh!” She was quite overwhelmed with the turpitude of it.
”You shall, you shall,” I determined for her.
”Oh, Olivia, I have _wanted_ you so. I knew you'd understand. It was all right so long as mother lived; I could do anything for her, but now I want--I want to be _me_!” I understood very well what that want was. But first off I had to explain to Effie why I couldn't take her with me. It was wonderful how she entered into my feeling about my work, and my lack of success in Chicago.
”_Of course_, you ought to go to New York. You'll be a great tragic actress, Olive, I know _that_. You could go, too, if you could get your share out of the business. You could have mine and yours!” She glowed over it. But the fact was we couldn't get the money out of the business.
As it stood we couldn't have sold the shop for what mother had put into it, and, besides, we should have had to deal first with Forester's conviction that he was taking care of our shares for us. I needn't have worried about Effie; she was too pretty and competent not to have arranged for herself. The princ.i.p.al and his wife drove over from Montecito to say that they would be glad to have her come back and finish the course interrupted within a few months of graduation by my mother's illness. And for her board and tuition she was to act as the princ.i.p.al's secretary. Within a year she wrote that she was engaged to their son.
In the meantime I undertook to stop the capacious maw of Forrie's need of being important; and the only way I saw to do it, involved my surrender of any hope I had of finding my own release in what my mother had left us of my father's hard won savings. I shouldn't have had any compunction, so fierce was my own need of success, about forcing my brother's hand, but I meant definitely not to leave any gap in his life for Effie to be drawn back into. Before we had come to this point, the second afternoon after the funeral in fact, circ.u.mstances had begun to work for me. Effie and I, looking out of the window, saw Mrs. Jastrow coming along by the front fence with all her gentility spread, as it were, by the feeling she had of her call on us being a diplomatic function.
”She's coming to see how we take it,” Effie averred.
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