The Brimming Cup
CHAPTER XXIII
MARISE LOOKS DOWN ON THE STARS
July 22.
She passed out from the office into the yellow glare of the sun,
her feet moving steadily forward, with no volition of hers, along
the dusty road. And as steadily, with as little volition of hers,
march, march, came . . . first what Eugenia had said, the advance
from that to Mrs. Powers' words, from that to the stenographer's,
to the name on the envelope . . . and then like the door to a
white-hot blast-furnace thrown open in her face, came the searing
conception of the possibility that it might be true, and all the
world lost.
The extremity and horror of this aroused her to a last effort at
self-preservation so that she flung the door shut by a fierce
incapacity to believe any of those relentless facts which hung one
from another with their horrible enchaining progression. No, she
had been dreaming. It was all preposterous!
The heat wavered up from the hot earth in visible pulsations and
there pulsed through her similar rhythmic waves of feeling; the
beginning . . . what Eugenia had said, had said that Neale had
told her . . . what Mrs. Powers had said, "Lots of men that run
mills do that sort of thing" . . . what the stenographer had said .
. . the name on the envelope . . . suppose it should be
true.
She was at Cousin Hetty's door now; a give-and-take of women's
voices sounding within. "Here's Mrs. Crittenden back. Come on,
Nelly, we better be going. There's all the work to do."
Marise went in and sat down, looking at them with stony
indifference, at 'Gene this time as well as at the women. The drawn
sickness of his ashy face did not move her in the least now. What
did she care what he did, what anyone did, till she knew whether
she had ever had Neale or not? The women's chatter sounded remote
and foolish in her ears.
If Neale had done that . . . if that was the man he was . . .
but of course it was preposterous, and she had been dreaming. What
was that that Eugenia had said? The descent into hell began again
step by step.
The Powers went out, the old woman still talking, chattering, as
if anything mattered now.
After they were gone, Agnes ran to the door calling, "Mis'
Powers! You forgot your pan and towel after all!" And there was
Mrs. Powers again, talking, talking.
She had been saying something that needed an answer apparently,
for now she stood waiting, expectant.
"What was that, Mrs. Powers? I was thinking of something
else."
"I was just tellin' you that there's going to be a big change
over to our house. 'Gene, he told Nelly, as he was setting here
waiting for you, how he was going to cut down the big pine one of
these days, like she always wanted him to. You know, the one that
shades the house so. 'Gene's grandfather planted it, and he's
always set the greatest store by it. Used to say he'd just as soon
cut his grandmother's throat as chop it down. But Nelly, she's all
housekeeper and she never did like the musty way the shade makes
our best room smell. I never thought to see the day 'Gene would
give in to her about that. He's gi'n in to her about everything
else though. Only last night he was tellin' her, he was going to
take something out'n the savings-bank and buy her an organ for
Addie to learn to play on, that Nelly always hankered after. Seems
'sthough he can't do enough for Nelly, don't it?"
Marise looked at her coldly, incapable of paying enough
attention to her to make any comment on what she said. Let them cut
down all the trees in the valley, and each other's throats into the
bargain, if Neale had . . . if there had never been her Neale, the
Neale she thought she had been living with, all these years.
Mrs. Powers had gone finally, and the house was silent at last,
so silent that she could now hear quite clearly, as though Eugenia
still sat there, what the sweet musical voice was saying over and
over. Why had they gone away and left her alone to face this deadly
peril which advanced on her step by step without mercy, time after
time? Now there was nothing to do but to wait and stand it off.
She was sitting in the same chair, her umbrella still in her
hand, waiting, when Agnes came in to say that she had lunch ready.
She turned eyes of astonished anger and rebuke on her. "I don't
want anything to eat," she said in so strange a voice that Agnes
crept back to the kitchen, shuffling and scared.
She was still sitting there, looking fixedly before her, and
frowning, when Agnes came to the door to say timidly that the
gentleman had come about using his car to meet the train, and
wanted to know if he could see Mrs. Crittenden.
Marise looked at her, frowning, and shook her head. But it was
not until late that night that she understood the words that Agnes
had spoken.
She was still sitting there, rigid, waiting, when Agnes brought
in a lighted lamp, and Marise saw that evening had come. The light
was extremely disagreeable to her eyes. She got up stiffly, and
went outdoors to the porch, sitting down on the steps.
The stars were beginning to come out now. The sight of them
suggested something painful, some impression that belonged to that
other world that had existed before this day, before she had
conceived the possibility that Neale might not be Neale, might
never have been Neale, that there was no such thing for her as
human integrity. Was it she who had leaned out from the window and
felt herself despised by the height and vastness of the stars? From
the height and vastness of her need, she looked down on them now,
and found them nothing, mere pin-pricks in the sky, compared to
this towering doubt of her, this moral need which shouted down all
the mere matter on the earth and in the heavens above the earth.
Something eternal was at stake now, the faith in righteousness of a
human soul.
She had thought childishly, shallowly last night that she had
had no faith, and could live with none. That was because she had
not conceived what it would be to try to live without faith,
because she had not conceived that the very ground under her feet
could give way. At that very moment she had had a faith as
boundless as the universe, and had forgotten it. And now it was put
in doubt. She could not live without it. It was the only vital
thing for her.
Was she the woman who had felt forced into acquiescing when
Vincent Marsh had said so boldly and violently, that she loved her
husband no more, that he was nothing to her now? It seemed to her
at this moment that it was a matter of the utmost unimportance
whether she loved him or not; but she could not live without
believing him. That was all. She could not live without that. Life
would be too utterly base . . .
Neale nothing to her? She did not know what he was to
her, but the mere possibility of losing her faith in him was like
death. It was a thousand times worse than death, which was merely
material. This mattered a great deal more than the physical death
of someone's body . . . it was the murder, minute by minute, hour
by hour, month by month, year by year of all her married life, of
all she had found lovable and tolerable and beautiful and real in
life.
Of course this could not be true . . . of course not . . . but
if it were true, she would find the corrosive poison of a false
double meaning in every remembered hour. She did not believe any of
those hideously marshaled facts, but if they were true, she would
go back over all those recollections of their life together and
kill them one by one, because every hour of her life had been
founded on the most unthinking, the most absolute, the most
recklessly certain trust in Neale. To know that past in peril,
which she had counted on as safe, more surely than on anything in
life, so surely that she had almost dismissed it from her mind like
a treasure laid away in a safe hiding-place . . . to know those
memories in danger was a new torture that had never before been
devised for any human being. No one had the safe and consecrated
past taken from him. Its pricelessness shone on her with a blinding
light. What if it should be taken away, if she should find she had
never had it, at all . . . ?
The idea was so acute an anguish to her that she startled
herself by a cry of suffering.
Agnes' voice behind her asked tremblingly, "Did you call me,
Miss Marise?"
Marise shifted her position, drew a breath, and answered in a
hard tone, "No."
She knew with one corner of her mind that Agnes must be
terrified. What if she were? Marise's life-long habit of divining
another's need and ministering to it, vanished like a handful of
dust in a storm. What did she care about Agnes? What did she care
about anything in the world but that she should have back again
what she had valued so little as to lose it from her mind
altogether? All of her own energy was strained in the bitterness of
keeping her soul alive till Neale should come. She had not the
smallest atom of strength to care about the needs of anyone
else.
She looked up at the stars, disdainful of them. How small they
were, how unimportant in the scheme of things, so much less able to
give significance to the universe, than the presence of integrity
in a human soul.
If she could have Neale back again, as she had always had him
without thinking of it, if she could have her faith in him again,
the skies might shrivel up like a scroll, but something eternal
would remain in her life.
It seemed to her that she heard a faint sound in the distance,
on the road, and her strength ran out of her like water. She tried
to stand up but could not.
Yes, it was the car, approaching. The two glaring headlights
swept the white road, stopped, and went out. For an instant the
dark mass stood motionless in the starlight. Then something moved,
a man's tall figure came up the path.
"Is that you, Marise?" asked Neale's voice.
She had not breath to speak, but all of her being cried out
silently to him the question which had had all the day such a
desperate meaning for her, "Is that you, Neale?"