Part 27 (2/2)
However, on that serene September Sunday a week later, it didn't rain; and Maurice fell into the spirit of Edith's plans; for, after all, even if the car did pa.s.s Lily's ugly little house, it wouldn't mean anything to anybody! ”I'll sit with my back to that side of the street,” he told himself. ”It's safe enough! And it will give Buster a good time.” He didn't realize that he rather hankered for a good time himself; to be sure, he felt a hundred years old! But money was no longer a very keen anxiety (he had pa.s.sed his twenty-fifth birthday); and the day was glittering with suns.h.i.+ne, and Edith would make coffee, and Eleanor would sing. Yes! Edith should have a good time!
They went clanging gayly along over the bridge, down Maple Street, and through the suburbs of Medfield until they came to the end of the car line, where they piled out, with all their impediments, and started for the river and the big locust.
”You'll sing, Nelly,” Maurice said--Eleanor's face lighted with pleasure;--”and I'll tell Edith how a girl ought to behave on her wedding trip, and you can instruct Johnny how to elope.”
Then, with little Bingo springing joyously, but rather stiffly, ahead of them, they tramped across the yellowing stubble of the mowed field, talking of their coffee, and whether there would be too much wind for their fire--and all the while Maurice was aware of Lily at No. 16; and Eleanor was remembering her hope of a time when she and Maurice would be coming here, and it would not be ”just us”! and Johnny was thinking that Edith was intelligent--for a woman; and Edith was telling herself that _this_ kind of thing was some sense!
Eleanor, sitting down under the old locust, watched the three young people. She wondered when Maurice would tell her to sing. ”The river is a lovely accompaniment, isn't it?” she hinted. No one replied.
”I'm going in wading after dinner,” Edith announced; ”what do you say, boys? Let's take off our shoes and stockings, and walk down to the second bridge. Eleanor can sit here and guard our things.”
”I'm with you!” Maurice said; and Johnny said he didn't mind; but Eleanor protested.
”You'll get your skirts wringing wet, Edith. And--I thought we were to sit here and sing?”
”Oh, you can sing any old time,” Edith said, lifting the lid of the coffee pot and stirring the brown froth with a convenient stick.
”And I'm just to look on?” Eleanor said.
”Why, wade, if you want to,” her husband said; ”It's safe enough to leave Edith's things here.”
After that he was too much absorbed in shooing ants off the marmalade to give any thought to his wife. The luncheon (except to her) was the usual delightful discomfort of balancing coffee cups on uncertain knees, and waving off wasps, and upsetting gla.s.ses of water. Maurice talked about the ball game, and Edith gossiped darkly of her teachers, and Johnny Bennett ate enormously and looked at Edith.
Eleanor neither ate nor gossiped; but she, too, watched Edith--and listened. Bingo, in his mistress's lap, had snarled at Johnny when he took Eleanor's empty cup away, which led Edith to say that he was jealous.
”I don't call it 'jealous,'” Eleanor said, ”to be fond of a person.”
”You can't _really_ be fond of anybody, and be jealous,” Edith announced; ”or if you are, it is just Bingoism.”
This brought a quick protest from Eleanor, which was followed by the inevitable discussion; Edith began it by quoting, ”'Love forgets self, and jealousy remembers self.'”
Maurice grinned and said nothing--it was enough for him to see Eleanor hit, _hard_! But Johnny protested:
”If your girl monkeys round with another fellow,” he said, ”you have a right to be jealous.”
”Of course,” said Eleanor.
”No, sir!” said Edith. ”You have a right to be _unhappy._ If the other fellow's nicer than you--I mean if he has something that attracts her that you haven't, of course you'd be unhappy! (though you could get busy and _be_ nice yourself.) Or, if he's not as nice as you, you'd be unhappy, because you'd be so awfully disappointed in her. But there's no jealousy about _that_ kind of thing! Jealousy is hogging all the love for yourself. Like Bingo! And _I_ call it plain garden selfishness--and no sense, either, because you don't gain anything by it. Do you think you do, Maurice? ... For Heaven's sake, hand me the sandwiches!”
Maurice didn't express his thoughts; he just roared with laughter.
Eleanor reddened; Johnny, handing the sandwiches, said that, though Edith generally could reason pretty well--for a woman--in this particular matter she was 'way off.
”You are long on logic, Edith,” Maurice agreed; ”but short on human nature; (she hasn't an idea how the shoe fits!).”
”The reason I'm so up on jealousy,” Edith explained, complacently, ”is because yesterday, in English Lit., our professor worked off a lot of quotations on us. Listen to this (only I can't say just exactly the words!): '_Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes by fire, yet jealousy_'--oh, what does come next? Oh yes; I know--'_yet jealousy extinguishes love, as ashes smother flames_.'”
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