The Brimming Cup Part 41

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 gla.s.s-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 pa.s.s 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 compa.s.sionately. "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 ... n.o.body 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.ses. 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?