The Brimming Cup

CHAPTER XXII
EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN

Agnes brought upstairs an armful of white roses. "The lady that visits at your house, she brought them from your garden and she wants to see you if she can."

Eugenia of course. That was unexpected. She must have made an effort to do that, she who hated sickness and death and all dark things.

"Yes, tell her I will be down in a moment. Take her in a glass of cold water, too, will you please, Agnes. The walk over here must have been terribly hot for her."

The roses showed that. They were warm to the touch and as she looked at them intently, at their white clear faces, familiar to her as those of human beings, bent on her with a mute message from the garden, she saw they had begun to droop imperceptibly, that the close, fine texture of their petals had begun ever so slightly to wither. She sprinkled them, put their stems deep into water and went downstairs, wiping her moist hands on her handkerchief.

Eugenia in mauve organdie stood up from the deep Windsor chair where she had sunk down, and came forward silently to greet her. They kissed each other ceremoniously in token of the fact that a death lay between them and the last time they had met . . . was it only yesterday morning?

"Were you able to sleep at all, Marise? You look shockingly tired."

"Oh yes, thanks. I slept well enough. Are the children all right?"

Eugenia nodded, "Yes, as usual."

"Did their father tell them the news of Cousin Hetty's death? How did they take it? Elly perhaps was . . ."

Eugenia did not know about this, had not happened to hear anybody say. But old Touclé was back, at least, to do the work.

"I knew she must be," said Marise. "She was here last night. It was she, you know, who found Frank Warner's body at the foot of . . . of course you've heard of that?"

Eugenia made a little wry face. Of course she had heard of that, she said with an accent of distaste. Everybody was talking about the melodramatic accident, as probably they would still be talking about it a hundred years from now, up here where nothing happened. People had come all the way from North Ashley to look at the place, and some of the men and boys had gone around up to the top of the Eagle Rocks to see where Frank had lost his footing. They found his surveyor's compass still set upon its staff. It was where the line ran very near the edge and Frank must have stepped over the cliff as he was sighting along it. They could see torn leaves and stripped twigs as though he had tried to save himself as he fell.

She stopped speaking. Marise found herself too sick and shaken to venture any comment. There was rather a long silence, such as was natural and suitable under the circumstances, in that house. Presently Marise broke this to ask if anyone knew how Frank's mother had taken the news, although she knew of course Eugenia was the last person of whom to ask such a question. As she expected, Eugenia had only lifted eyebrows, a faint slow shake of her head and a small graceful shrug of her shoulders, her usual formula for conveying her ignorance of common facts, and her indifference to that ignorance.

But Marise, looking at her, as they sat opposite each other in the twilight of the closely shuttered room, was struck by the fact that Eugenia did not seem wholly like herself. Her outward aspect was the same, the usual exquisite exactitude of detail, every blond hair shining and in its place, the flawless perfection of her flesh as miraculous as ever, her tiny white shoe untouched by dust through which she must have walked to reach the house. But there was something . . . in her eyes, perhaps . . . which now looked back at Marise with an expression which Marise did not understand or recognize. If it had not been impossible to think it of Eugenia, Marise would have imagined that her eyes looked troubled, excited. Was it possible that even in her safe ivory tower of aloofness from life, she had felt the jarring blow of the brutally immediate tragedy of the Eagle Rocks? Or perhaps even Cousin Hetty's disappearance . . . she had always hated reminders of death.

As Marise, surprised, looked at her and wondered thus passingly if she felt any reverberation from the tragedy-laden air about them, Eugenia's face hardened back into its usual smooth calm; over the eyes that had been for an instant transparent and alive with troubled brightness, slid their acquired expression of benignant indifference. She answered Marise's faintly inquiring gaze by getting up as if to go, remarking in a clear low tone (she was the only person who had come into the house who had not succumbed to that foolish, instinctive muffling of the voice), "I forgot to give you a message from Neale. He is obliged to be away today, on business, something about a deed to some wood-land."

Marise was slightly surprised. "Where is he going?" she asked. "In the Ford? On the train?" How little she had thought about the mill of late, that she should be so entirely blank as to this business trip.

"Oh, I didn't even try to understand," said Eugenia, smoothing the shining silk of her parasol. "Business finds no echo in me, you know. A man came to supper last night, unexpectedly, and they talked interminably about some deal, lumbering, lines, surveys, deeds . . . till Touclé came in with the news of the accident. The man was from New Hampshire, with that droll, flat New Hampshire accent. You know how they talk, 'bahn' and 'yahd' for barn and yard."

The words "New Hampshire" and "deeds" stirred a disagreeable association of ideas in Marise's mind. The shyster lawyer who had done the Powers out of their inheritance had come from New Hampshire. However, she supposed there were other people in the state besides dishonest lawyers.

Eugenia went on casually. "It seemed quite important. Neale was absorbed by it. He told me afterward, Neale did, that the man had acted as agent for him some years ago in securing a big tract of wood-land around here, something that had been hard to get hold of."

Marise was startled and showed it by a quick lift of her head. She had never known Neale to employ an agent. She looked hard at Eugenia's quiet, indifferent face. The other seemed not to notice her surprise, and returned her look with a long clear gaze, which apparently referred to her hair, for she now remarked in just the tone she had used for the news about Neale, "That way of arranging your coiffure is singularly becoming to you. Mr. Marsh was speaking about it the other day, but I hadn't specially noticed it. He's right. It gives you that swathed close-coifed Leonardo da Vinci look." She put her handkerchief into a small bag of mauve linen, embroidered with white and pale-green crewels, and took up her parasol.

Marise felt something menacing in the air. Eugenia frightened her a little with that glass-smooth look of hers. The best thing to do was to let her go without another word. And yet she heard her voice asking, urgently, peremptorily, "What was the name of the man from New Hampshire?"

Eugenia said, "What man from New Hampshire?" and then, under Marise's silent gaze, corrected herself and changed her tone. "Oh yes, let me see: Neale introduced him, of course. Why, some not uncommon name, and yet not like Smith or Jones. It began with an L, I believe."

Marise said to herself, "I will not say another word about this," and aloud she said roughly, brusquely, "It wasn't Lowder, of course."

"Yes, yes," said Eugenia, "you're right. It was Lowder. I thought it was probably something you'd know about. Neale always tells you everything."

She looked away and remarked, "I suppose you will inherit the furniture of this house? There are nice bits. This Windsor chair; and I thought I saw a Chippendale buffet in the dining-room."

Marise, immobile in her chair, repeated, "It wasn't Lowder. You didn't say it was Lowder."

"Yes, it was Lowder," said Eugenia clearly. "And now you speak of it once more, I remember one more thing about their talk although I didn't try to understand much of it. It was all connected with the Powers family. It was their woodlot which this Mr. Lowder had bought for Neale. I was surprised to know that they had ever had any wood-land. They have always seemed too sordidly poverty-stricken. But it seems this was the only way Neale could get hold of it, because they refused to sell otherwise."

She looked again at Marise, a long, steady, and entirely opaque gaze which Marise returned mutely, incapable of uttering a word. She had the feeling of leaning with all her weight against an inner-door that must be kept shut.

"Did Neale tell you this man had secured the Powers woodlot for him, for Neale, for our mill?" she heard her voice asking, faint in the distance, far off from where she had flung herself against that door.

"Why yes, why not? Not very recently he said, some time ago. We had quite a talk about it afterwards. It must be something you've forgotten," said Eugenia. She took up a card from the table and fanned herself as she spoke, her eyes not quitting Marise's face. "It's going to be as hot as it was yesterday," she said with resignation. "Doesn't it make you long for a dusky, high-ceilinged Roman room with a cool, red-tiled floor, and somebody out in the street shouting through your closed shutters, 'Ricotta! Ricotta!'" she asked lightly.

Marise looked at her blankly. She wished she could lean forward and touch Eugenia to make sure she was really standing there. What was it she had been saying? She could not have understood a word of it. It was impossible that it should be what it seemed to mean,—impossible!

A door somewhere in the house opened and shut, and steps approached. The two women turned their eyes towards the hall-door. Old Mrs. Powers walked in unceremoniously, her gingham dress dusty, her lean face deeply flushed by the heat, a tin pan in her hands, covered with a blue-and-white checked cloth.

"I thought maybe you'd relish some fresh doughnuts as well as anything," she said briskly, with no preliminary of greeting.

Something about the atmosphere of the room struck her oddly for all the composed faces and quiet postures of the two occupants. She brought out as near an apology for intruding, as her phraseless upbringing would permit her. "I didn't see Agnes in the kitchen as I come through, so I come right along, to find somebody," she said, a little abashed.

Marise was incapable of speaking to her, but she made a silent gesture of thanks, and, moving forward, took the pan from the older woman's hand.

Mrs. Powers went on, "If 'twouldn't bother you, could you put them in your jar now, and let me take the pan back with me? We hain't got any too many dishes, you know."

Marise went out to the pantry with the older woman, feeling with astonishment the floor hard and firm under her feet as usual, the walls upright about her. Only something at the back of her throat contracted to a knot, relaxed, contracted, with a singular, disagreeable, involuntary regularity.

"You look down sick, Mis' Crittenden," said Mrs. Powers with a respectful admiration for the suitability of this appearance. "And there ain't nothing surprising that you should. Did you ever see anybody go off more sudden than Miss Hetty? Such a good woman she was, too. It must ha' gi'n you an awful turn." She poured the doughnuts into the jar and, folding the checked cloth, went on, "But I look at it this way. 'Twas a quick end, and a peaceful end without no pain. And if you'd seen as many old people drag along for years, as I have, stranglin' and chokin' and half-dead, why, you'd feel to be thankful Miss Hetty was spared that. And you too!"

"Marise," said Eugenia, coming to the pantry door, "your neighbors wanted me, of course, to bring you all their sympathetic condolence. Mr. Welles asked me to tell you that he would send all the flowers in his garden to the church for the service tomorrow. And Mr. Marsh was very anxious to see you today, to arrange about the use of his car in meeting the people who may come on the train tomorrow, to attend the funeral. He said he would run over here any time today, if you would send Agnes to tell him when you would see him. He said he wouldn't leave the house all day, to be ready to come at any time you would let him."

Mrs. Powers was filled with satisfaction at such conduct. "Now that's what I call real neighborly," she said. "And both on 'em new to our ways too. That Mr. Welles is a real nice old man, anyhow. . . . There! I call him 'old' and I bet he's younger than I be. He acts so kind o' settled down to stay. But Mr. Marsh don't act so. That's the kind man I like to see, up-and-coming, so you never know what he's a-goin' to do next."

Eugenia waited through this, for some answer, and still waited persistently, her eyes on Marise's face.

Marise aroused herself. She must make some comment, of course. "Please thank them both very much," she said finally, and turned away to set the jar on a shelf.

"Well, you goin'?" said Mrs. Powers, behind her, evidently to Eugenia. "Well, good-bye, see you at the funeral tomorrow, I s'pose."

Marise looked around and caught a silent, graceful salutation of farewell from Eugenia, who disappeared down the hall, the front door closing gently behind her.

Mrs. Powers began again abruptly, "Folks is sayin' that Frank Warner must ha' been drinking, but I don't believe it. He wa'n't no drinker. And where'd he git it, if he was? It was heedless, that's what it was. He always was a heedless critter from a little boy up. He was the one that skated right ahead into the hole and most drowned him, and he was fooling with his gran'father's shot-gun when it went off and most blew him to pieces. 'S a wonder he lived to grow up: he come so nigh breaking his neck, before this."

Marise was surprised to hear Eugenia's voice again, "Marise, I stepped back to ask you if there are any errands I could do for you, any messages to take. I pass by the door of Mr. Welles' house. I could perfectly easily stop there and tell Mr. Marsh he could see you now, for instance."

Marise seemed to see her from afar. She heard what she said, but she was aware of it only as an interruption. There was a question she must ask old Mrs. Powers. How could she think of anything else till that had been answered? She said to Eugenia at random, using the first phrase that came into her mind, "No, no. Later. Some other time."

Eugenia hesitated, took a step away from the door, and then came back in, deliberately, close to Marise. She spoke to her in Italian, very clearly, "He is not a man who will wait."

To this Marise, wholly engrossed in her inner struggle, opposed a stupid blankness, an incapacity to think of what Eugenia was saying, long enough to understand it. In that dark inner room, where she kept the door shut against the horror that was trying to come in, she dared not for an instant look away. She merely shook her head and motioned impatiently with her hand. Why did not Eugenia go away?

And yet when Eugenia had gone, she could not bring the words out because of that strange contraction of her throat.

"My! but you ought to go and lie down," said Mrs. Powers compassionately. "You're as white as a sheet. Why don't you just give up for a while? Agnes and I'll tend to things."

Marise was filled with terror at the idea of not getting her answer, and spoke quickly, abruptly. "Mrs. Powers, you never heard, did you, you never thought, in that trouble about losing your wood-land . . . nobody ever thought that Mr. Lowder was only an agent for someone else, whose name wasn't to be known then."

"Oh sure," said Mrs. Powers readily. "'Gene found out from a man that had lived in his town in New Hampshire that Lowder didn't do no lumbering of his own. He just makes a business of dirty deals like that for pay. He always surmised it to be some lumber-company; somebody that runs a mill. Lots of men that run mills do that sort of thing, darn 'em!"

Marise leaned against the pantry shelf. The old woman glanced at her face, gave a cry, and pushed her into a chair, running for water. At the sound, Agnes came trotting, and showed a scared rabbit-like face. "She's just beat out with the shock of Miss Hetty's going off so sudden," explained Mrs. Powers to Agnes.

Marise got to her feet angrily. She had entirely forgotten that Cousin Hetty was dead, or that she was in her house. She was shocked that for a moment she had relaxed her steady pressure against that opening door. She flung herself against it now. What could she do next?

Instantly, clearly, as though she had heard someone saying it to her, she thought, "Why, of course, all I have to do is to go and ask Neale about it!"

It was so simple. Somehow, of course, Neale could give the answer she must have. Why had she not thought of that the instant Eugenia had begun to speak?

She drank the glass of water Agnes gave her and said, "Mrs. Powers, could you do something for me? I promised I would stay here till the funeral and I know Agnes is afraid to stay alone. Would you mind waiting here for perhaps half an hour till I could get to the mill and back? There is something important I must see to."

Mrs. Powers hesitated. "Well now, Mis' Crittenden, there ain't nothing I wouldn't do for you. But I'm kind o' funny about dead folks. I don't believe I'd be much good to Agnes because I feel just the way she does. But I'll run over to the house and get Nelly and 'Gene to come. I guess the four of us together won't be nervous about staying. 'Gene ain't workin' today. He got a sunstroke or something yesterday, in the sun, cultivatin' his corn and he don't feel just right in his head, he says."

She went out of the door as she spoke, calling over her shoulder, "I wun't be gone long."

Marise sat down again, there in the pantry, leaned her head against the door and looked steadily at the shelves before her, full of dishes and jars and bottles and empty jelly glasses. In her mind there was only one thing, a fixed resolve not to think at all, of anything, until she had been to Neale's office and had Neale explain it to her. Surely he would not have started on that trip whatever it was. It was so early still. She must not think about it at all, until she had asked Neale. Eugenia had probably made a mistake about the name. Even if Neale had gone she would be able to ask about the name and find that Eugenia had made a mistake. That would make everything all right. Of course Eugenia had made a mistake about the name.

She was still staring fixedly at the shelves, frowning and beginning again to count all the things on them, when Mrs. Powers' voice sounded from the kitchen. "I met 'em on the way is why I'm back so soon," she explained to Agnes. "Nelly had some flowers to bring. And they've been down by the river and got a great lot of ferns too."

Marise started up, for an instant distracted from her concentration on what Eugenia had said. This was the first time she had seen Nelly and 'Gene since Frank's death. How would they look? How did people go on living? How would they speak, and how could they listen to anything but their own thoughts? What had Frank's death meant to Nelly?

She turned shrinkingly towards Nelly. Nelly was bending down and flicking the dust from her shoes with her handkerchief. When she stood up, she looked straight at Marise. Under the thick-springing, smooth-brushed abundance of her shining fair hair, her eyes, blue as precious stones, looked out with the deep quiet which always seemed so inscrutable to the other woman.

She held out an armful of flowers. "I thought you'd like the white phlox the best. I had a lot of pink too, but I remembered Mrs. Bayweather said white is best at such times."

Marise drew a long breath. What superb self-control!

"Were the biscuits good?" asked Nelly, turning to Agnes. "I was afraid afterward maybe they weren't baked enough."

Marise was swept to her feet. If Nelly could master her nerves like that, she could do better herself. She took the flowers, carried them to the kitchen, and set them in a panful of water. She had not yet looked at 'Gene.

She went to find an umbrella to shield her hatless head from the sun, and on her way out only, cast a swift glance at 'Gene. That was enough. All the blazing, dusty way to the mill, she saw hanging terribly before her that haggard ashy face.

At the mill, she paused in the doorway of the lower office, looking in on the three desk-workers, tapping on their machines, leaning sideways to consult note-books. The young war-cripple, Neale's special protégé, seeing her, got to his feet to ask her what he could do for her.

Marise considered him for a moment before she answered. Was there anything he could do for her? Why had she come? All she could remember for the moment was that singular contraction of her throat, which had come back now.

Then she remembered, "Is Mr. Crittenden here?"

"No, he was called away for the day, urgent business in New Hampshire."

Marise looked about her helplessly. "May I sit down for a moment?"

The young stenographer ran, limping and eager, to offer her a chair, and then, shyly, swung his swivel chair towards her, not wishing to go back to his work, uncertain what to say to his employer's wife.

"When will Mr. Crittenden be back?" asked Marise, although she knew the answer.

"No later than tonight, he said," answered the stenographer. "He spoke particularly about coming back because of Miss Hetty Allen's funeral."

"Yes, of course," said Marise.

There was nothing more to be said, she knew that, nothing more to be done, until Neale came back. But it seemed physically impossible for her to live until then, with the clutch in her throat.

She ought to get up now, at once, and go back to Cousin Hetty's. The Powers were waiting for her return. But her consternation at finding Neale really gone was a blow from which she needed a breathing time to recover. She couldn't have it so. She could never endure a whole day with this possibility like a threatening powder-mine under her feet, ready to go off and bring her inner world to ruin and despair. She put her hand out to take her umbrella and struggled up.

"Any message to leave for Mr. Crittenden?" asked the stenographer, seeing her ready to go.

She shook her head. Her eye fell on the waste-paper basket beside the desk. On one of the empty envelopes, torn in two, the words, "Return to C.K. Lowder," stood out clearly. She turned away and stood motionless, one hand at her temple. She was thinking to herself, "This is simply incredible. There is some monstrous mistake. If I could only think of a way to find it out before it kills me."

She became aware that the young cripple was looking at her anxiously, and saw in his startled, agitated face a reflection of what hers must be. She made an effort to speak quietly, and heard herself say, "Do you happen to remember if Mr. Crittenden was alone as he drove away?"

"Oh no," said the other. "He had had someone with him ever since the afternoon train came in yesterday. Mr. Crittenden drove the car in himself to the Ashley station to meet him. Somebody here on business."

"What sort of a man, do you remember?" asked Marise.

"Well, a clean-shaven man, with a queer thin long mouth, like the pictures of William Jennings Bryan's. And he talked out of one corner of it, the way . . . see here, Mrs. Crittenden, you look awfully tired. Wouldn't you better sit down and rest a moment more?"

Marise shook her head with an impatient gesture. Now she needed to get away from that office as much as she had wished to go to it. The place was hateful to her. The young man's eyes were intolerable. He was one of the people, one of the many, many people who had grown up trusting in Neale.

She swung suddenly to a furious incredulity about the whole thing. It was nonsense! None of it could be true. What were all these people saying to her, Eugenia, Mrs. Powers, this boy . . . ? She would never forgive them for trying to do such an infamous thing. They were trying to make her believe that Neale had been back of Lowder in the low-down swindle that had been practised on the Powers. They were trying to make her believe that for seven years Neale had been lying to her with every breath he drew. Because other men could lie, they thought they could make her believe that Neale did. Because other women's husbands had done base things in business, they thought she would be capable of believing that about Neale. They didn't know how preposterous it was, how close she and Neale had always been, how deeply a part of the whole aspect of life to her, Neale's attitude toward his work had become. Those people did not realize what they were trying to make her believe, it was not only that her husband had been the instigator of a mean little cheat which had cost years of suffering to helpless neighbors, it was the total destruction of all that she had thought Neale to be . . . thought him? Known him to be.

"I must get back at once," she said, with a resentful accent and moved towards the door.

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