Part 41 (1/2)
”I can't be too patient with her when she's forlorn, because I--I haven't played the game with her.”
”It's up to her to forgive that!”
”She doesn't know it.”
”Maurice! You haven't a secret from Eleanor?”
Her dismay was like a stab. ”Edith, I can't help it! It was a long time ago--but it would upset her to know that I'd--well, failed her in any way.” His face was so wrung that Edith could have cried; but she said what she thought:
”Secrets are horrid, Maurice. You've made a mistake.”
”A 'mistake'?” He almost laughed at the devilish humor of that little word 'mistake,' as applied to his ruined life. ”Well, yes, Edith; I made a 'mistake,' all right.”
”Oh, I don't mean a 'mistake' as to this thing you say that Eleanor wouldn't like,” Edith said. ”I mean not telling her.”
He shook his head; with that nagging thought of Jacky in the back of his mind, it was impossible not to smile at her dogmatic ignorance.
”Because,” Edith explained, ”secrets trip you into fibbing.”
”You bet they do! I'm quite an accomplished liar.”
Edith did not smile; she spoke with impatient earnestness: ”That's perfectly silly; you are not a liar! You couldn't lie to save your life, and you know it.” Maurice laughed. ”Why, Maurice, don't you suppose I know you, through and through? _I_ know what you are!--a 'perfec' gentil knight.'”
She laughed, and Maurice threw up his hands.
”Bouquets,” Edith conceded, grinning; ”but I won't hand out any more, so you needn't fis.h.!.+ Well, I don't know what on earth you've done, and I don't care; and you can't tell me, of course! But one thing I do know; it isn't fair to Eleanor not to tell her, because--”
”My dear child--”
”Because she wouldn't really mind, she's so awfully devoted to you. Oh, Maurice, do tell Eleanor!” Then, even as she spoke, she was frightened; what was this thing that he did not dare to tell Eleanor?--”or me?”
Edith thought. It couldn't be that Maurice--was not good? Edith quailed at herself. She had a quick impulse to say, ”Forgive me, Maurice, for even thinking of such a horrid thing!” But all she said, aloud, briefly, was, ”As I see it, telling Eleanor would be playing the game.”
Maurice put his hand over her fist, clenched with conviction on her knee. ”Skeezics,” he said, ”you are the soundest thing the Lord ever made! As it happens, it's a thing I can't talk about--to anybody. But I'll never forget this, Edith. And ... dear, I'm glad you're going to be happy; you deserve the best man on earth, and old Johnny comes mighty darned near being the best!”
Edith, frowning, rose abruptly. ”Please don't talk that way. I hate that sort of talk! Johnny is my friend; that's all. So, please never--”
”I won't,” Maurice said, meekly; but some swift exultation made him add to himself, ”Poor old Johnny!” His face was radiant.
As for Edith, she hardly spoke all the way back to the house. But not because of ”poor old Johnny”! She was absorbed by that intuition--which she did not, she told herself, believe. Yet it clamored in her mind: Maurice had done something wrong. Something so wrong, that he couldn't speak of it, even to her! Then it must be--? ”No! _that's_ impossible!”
But with this recoil from a disgusting impossibility, came an upsurge of something she had never felt in her life--something not unlike that emotion she had once called Bingoism--a resentful consciousness that Maurice had not been as completely and confidentially her friend as she was his!
But Edith hadn't a mean fiber in her! Instantly, on the heels of that small pain came a greater and n.o.bler pain: ”I can't bear it if he has done anything wrong! But if he has, it's some wicked woman's fault.” As she said that, anger at an injury done to Maurice made her almost forget that first virginal repulsion--and made her entirely forget that fleeting pain of knowing that she had not meant as much to him as he meant to her! ”But he _hasn't_ done anything wrong,” she insisted; ”he wouldn't look at a horrid? woman!”
”For Heaven's sake, Edith,” Maurice remonstrated; ”this isn't any Marathon! Go slow. I'm not in any hurry to get home.”
”I am,” Edith said, briefly. She was in a great hurry! She wanted to be alone, and argue to herself that she had been guilty of a dreadful disloyalty to him.... ”Maurice? Why! He would be the last man in the world to--to do _that_,--darling old Maurice! He has simply had a crush on somebody, and likes her better than he likes Eleanor--or me; but _that's_ nothing. Eleanor deserves it; and very likely I do, too! But he's so frightfully honorable about Eleanor--he's a perfect crank on honor!--that he blames himself for even that.” By this time the possibility that the unknown somebody was ”horrid” had become unthinkable; she was probably terribly attractive, and Maurice had a crush on ... ”though, of course, she can't be really nice,” Edith thought; ”Maurice simply doesn't see through her. Boys are so stupid!
They don't know girls,” Again there was a Bingo moment of hot dislike for the ”girl,” whoever she was!--and she walked faster and faster.
Maurice, striding along beside her, was thinking of the irony of the ”bouquet” she had thrown at him, and the innocence of that ”Tell Eleanor”! ”What a child she is still! And she's not in love with Johnny--” He didn't understand his exhilaration when he said that, but, except when he reproached her for tearing ahead, it kept him silent...
Supper was ready when they got home, so Edith had no chance to be solitary, and after supper Johnny Bennett dropped in. When he took his reluctant departure (”Confound him!” Maurice thought, impatiently, ”he has on his sitting breeches to-night!”) Maurice told Edith to come into the garden with him, and listen to the evening primroses; ”They 'blossom with a silken burst of sound'--they _do_!” he insisted, for she jeered at the word ”listen.”