Chapter III: I

Lizzie’s visits to Cordelia suddenly ceased. She avoided her at church, sweeping out in the hushed elegance she affected, without a glance in her direction. Nora observed her tricks with quiet amusement. When Father Stokesbury went away for a month’s vacation in July, Lizzie grasped a little respite from her ecclesiastical excesses, and absented herself from Saint Margaret’s until his return.

Father Stokesbury had tea with Cordelia as soon as he resumed his parish duties. Nora managed to blunder out that she was glad to see him again, that they had missed him.

‘My dear, gracious Miss Nora. I’d almost be willing to go away again to hear such words from you,’ the rector laughed.

But the following day he didn’t come to tea. Cordelia said he must be very busy. Then the second day he didn’t come. Nora went to the front window to look down the street again and again. The next morning when she had finished cleaning her bedroom, stealing as much reading as she dared out of the midst of her work, she came downstairs to find the baking materials spread out on the kitchen table, but Cordelia nowhere in sight. She called to her from the top of the cellar steps and looked for her in the back yard. A few minutes later Cordelia returned, took off the coat she had worn to cover her gingham dress, and finished her interrupted baking. When she sat down to dinner, there were scarlet spots over her cheek-bones.

She crumbled up some bread on her plate and gulped down a cup of tea. Then she said, ‘I’ll leave you to wash the dishes, Nora. I’m going upstairs to lie down a while. My head aches a little.’

When Nora carried a cup of tea to Cordelia’s room late in the afternoon, she found the door locked. Cordelia’s voice sounded very queer and strained. She didn’t want the tea. She didn’t want anything. Just to lie quiet and not be disturbed. Nora could never remember Cordelia’s being ill before. It seemed strange to have the quiet rooms downstairs all to herself.

In the midst of her clumsy attempts to get supper, Mrs. Hill appeared at the kitchen door.

‘Where’s Cordelia?’ she whispered cautiously.

‘Upstairs.’

‘Oh!’ Mrs. Hill seemed very much excited. Her old eyes had the feverish glint of one entrusted with news too great to be borne. ‘Of course she hasn’t told you. Lizzie Guildford tried to kill herself. With gas. They say Cordelia was over there this morning.’

‘Was she out of her mind?’

‘It was your minister. She was set on marrying him. She asked him. Right out, they say. Promised to deed over everything she had. And when he wouldn’t——’ Mrs. Hill’s whisper grew into a lively hiss. ‘That ain’t the worst either. She said it was Cordelia. Cordelia after him instead o’ her. She told it all over the parish. It’s spread all over town. I heard it. And the Plant girls, and Edna. But this morning, when she thought she was most gone, she sent for Cordelia. To be forgiven an’ die in peace. That’s Lizzie for you. An’ they say Cordelia forgave her.’

Nora wanted to hold her fingers over her ears. Anything to shut out that terrible story. Her lips curled in infinite scorn. ‘What fools women are,’ she said.

Mrs. Hill shook her head. ‘You’re young. You don’t know. Just you wait. The smartest ones often make the biggest fools of themselves.’ She rose from her chair with a deep sigh. ‘Poor Cordelia. This’ll come hard on her. That pride o’ hers. But no one’ll ever know. She’s upstairs, you say?’

Nora went over and examined the steaming tea-kettle. ‘She took a little nap after finishing up the baking,’ she said.

Upon Mrs. Hill’s departure, she carried Cordelia’s supper upstairs and left it outside the door. Then she locked herself in her room. She couldn’t eat a morsel. Maybe she was sick like Cordelia. Sick all over. She would think of him no longer. Those mad fancies of hers—never again. A man over whom women made fools of themselves. Lizzie Guildford—she and Lizzie together. She dug her fingers into her burning cheeks. The shame of it. Yes, and Cordelia too. She knew now—she saw—she understood why Cordelia had changed so—become a different person. This was the end. Never again would she think of him—conjure up before her late at night in the darkness an image of blue eyes that crinkled with laughter and a voice with endearing twists and turns.

The next day she stole off to go walking with Eleanor Porter before tea-time. She could not trust herself to meet Father Stokesbury. If he came——

Cordelia and Nora sat down to almost silent meals, Nora stifled by her guilty consciousness of Cordelia’s failure to keep up a little meaningless talk. She stayed away from the house as much as she could.

A week passed, and Nora saw the rector only at church. A weight of constraint depressed the whole parish, while every one in low tones discussed Lizzie Guildford. It was rumored about that Father Stokesbury had stopped making calls, except where there was illness, and had shut himself up in his study the rest of the time.

At last, Lizzie was well again, and departed for an indefinite stay with friends. Nora wondered if Cordelia had seen her since that ghastly day.

II

Amy Henderson’s mother was found dead in bed one morning. Amy sent at once for Cordelia, who stayed with her most of the time until after the funeral.

‘I didn’t see that Mr. Shumway to the service,’ Mrs. Hill reported to Nora. ‘But he sent a huge wreath of white roses.’

The morning after the funeral, Nora, watching at the front window for Eleanor Porter to come and play tennis, saw Amy Henderson starting for the store.

‘There goes Amy as usual,’ she called to Cordelia, who was dusting the parlor. Cordelia came and stood beside her, and together they watched Amy out of sight. ‘I’m glad Amy’s got that young man,’ Nora observed half to herself.

‘What young man?’ Cordelia demanded. ‘She hasn’t got him. She has nothing.’ She resumed her dusting with a kind of rage.

‘I thought Miss Guildford said—and——’

‘Lizzie Guildford—what she says——’ Cordelia broke off suddenly, as if she had been betrayed out of silence.

Eleanor’s shout sounded from the next corner, and Nora bounded out of the house to escape from the knowledge of what Cordelia had tried unsuccessfully to hide from her keen young eyes.

‘I’ll beat you a love set,’ boasted Eleanor, as they raced side by side toward Lizzie Guildford’s tennis court.

By degrees rumors came to Nora which filled out what Cordelia had not said. It seemed that Henry Shumway wasn’t going to marry Amy. He wasn’t going to marry any one. At least not right away. He made love to all the girls—even the waitresses at the hotel. An inexperienced girl like Amy didn’t know any better than to take his empty gallantry seriously. And those flowers that came from the mysterious donor in Kewaukee—Edna Tillotson insinuated that Amy had sent them to herself.

As for Cordelia, age lay upon her once more, and her former chilling reserve, when she resumed the mourning garments she had recently put aside. Life was a steady course between home and church, back and forth, as if nothing had ever disturbed the even monotony of its ways. The house, too, settled back into its creaking joints as befits decrepit age.

III

Nora, returning from her daily walk to the end of the pier which stretched out over the lake to the fog station, with its bells and warning lights, saw a handsome collie pup bounding toward her. Roughly friendly, he leaped up against her with joyful barks.

‘You beauty!’ she exclaimed in delight. ‘You dear young dog!’

Nora’s heart leaped at the sound of a familiar voice. ‘He is a fine fellow, isn’t he?’ Father Stokesbury said. ‘The old Bishop gave him to me. It was jolly nice of him, I thought. He said this chap would keep me from being lonely at the rectory.’

Nora could not speak, but she lifted eloquent brown eyes to the young man’s attempt at gaiety. There was something gone from him, the edge of the fine buoyancy of his bright spirit dulled, the laughter less infectious and bubbling.

If she could only have told him then, putting out her hand to this lonely, discouraged young man, that she wasn’t like the others, that she was his friend, and that she understood. She was desolate, too, very often. His gaiety had helped her. He must smile in the same old way again. Perhaps she could even have helped him to understand the poor women who had complicated his position in the parish. They were very unhappy, too. His brightness had uplifted them. They couldn’t help liking him perhaps too well.

Yes, she understood. Knowledge of the emotional hunger of women—especially women—came in a sudden glare of illumination. You could be old like Lizzie Guildford or Cordelia, but there was something inside you which kept young. It hungered for love—for the love of some man. Amy Henderson and her pathetic dreams——Nora had once thought only the very young of sixteen, seventeen, had hopes that life wouldn’t be dull and sad. But she discerned now the truth that such hopes never left one. Always you were tormented—always—by the wish to be happy—happy by loving and being loved.

But Nora couldn’t put this into words. She felt a helpless choking at her lips. She must hurry away. She couldn’t even tell him she was sorry.

Father Stokesbury summoned another gallant attempt at a smile before she left him. Out of his hearing, the sobs escaped her. ‘The poor, poor women!’ she wept aloud, her words lost in the boom of the lake as it beat against the shore.

Beyond the sandy beach and on top of the hill close to Cordelia’s house, Nora looked back. Father Stokesbury stood gazing out on the dancing blue waters, the lively puppy close beside him, quite motionless.