All Kneeling/Chapter 21
Ellen, bringing Uncle Johnnie an armful of midsummer flowers with Christabel's love, told him her little news of the Farm. Christabel's roses had taken first prize at the Flower Show; Curtis was playing golf at the National over the week-end, for Christabel had decided he needed the change; Michael and Marigold had a new roan pony that they had named Black Beauty and Christabel had renamed Monsieur Patapon; Christabel's roses had taken first prize at the Flower Show
Had she told him that before? Her head was humming; she couldn't quite remember. She was so sleepy in the daytime now, so sleepless at night. If I could only go to bed, she would think, starving for sleep, but when she was in bed the thoughts would begin, forcing her eyelids open, stretching her body tense.
"You shouldn't have come to town on such a hot day," Uncle Johnnie said.
"There were errands. I had to see a new kitchen-maid, and then I thought Nick was going to drive out with me—he's coming for the week-end. But he must have misunderstood. They said at the office he'd already gone out by train."
She had thought that perhaps everything would be as it used to be if they had that hour together. Perhaps she could really believe what she tried to believe, what Nick kept telling her, that she imagined things. But Nick was at the Farm already. He and Christabel would be having tea now, in shadow under the beech tree. Christabel cool in thin white. Christabel, who never exasperated Nick by being jealous and stiff and stupid
He'll be as disappointed as I am when he realizes that I was to bring him out, she tried to reassure herself. Will he be? cold doubt asked. She turned away from the feeling, never before put into words, that made her tremble. Nick doesn't want to be alone with me.
"Nick and Christabel are great friends now. I'm so happy about it," she forced herself to say, hearing Nick's voice speaking of Christabel, "Why Ellen, darling, I never knew you to be catty about anyone before."
"I remember how miserable you said it made you when they didn't like each other, and how hard you were working to bring them together. So you've been successful."
"Nick sees now how beautiful she is, and how brilliant," Ellen said, keeping her voice steady. But tears overflowed; she couldn't stop them. She tried to wipe them away, but they kept on.
"Don't mind me," Uncle Johnnie said. "Go ahead and get soaking wet. It's a comfort to you and a compliment to me, and we'll get you dry before my capable lion-tamer comes back in all her starch. Do you think your Nick is in love with Christabel?"
"Please excuse me—it's just because it's so hot and I haven't been sleeping. No, not yet. He's fascinated and excited, that's all so far. But I'm frightened. He keeps telling me over and over how much he loves me—I think he's telling himself. He's wonderful to me this summer, as if he was sorry for me and trying to make up to me for something. And after he's been with Christabel he sort of laughs about her to me—but I'm frightened. She's working so hard to get him. It's all been so gradual, and yet now I feel as if it had all happened in a minute, and I ask myself what has happened, and I don't know. There isn't anything definite. Only first she bored him and he really disliked her, and then I kept telling him how lovely she was to me, and how generous, so for my sake he used to talk to her when he didn't want to. And she was so interested in everything that interested him. She got books and books on landscape gardening, she read for hours, she got to know more than he did about Alpine flowers for rock gardens, for instance. And she made him sorry for her. He told me how unhappily married she was, and yet how brave and loyal. I don't know how she does it; she makes them feel as if they had guessed it all themselves, without her telling them. And she let him do things for her that made him feel kind and important. He helped her with lots of Tear Stains on Taffeta"
Uncle Johnnie looked his question.
"That's her new book. He helped her with all the parts about old French gardens. He thinks she's wonderful now, and I understand. I used to think so, too. Only now I'm terrified because I think she's fascinating him more and more. I'm terrified, and I'm sick with jealousy."
She was silent for a moment, clasping and unclasping her shaking hands. Then she burst out:
"The thing I can't bear is that she's made Nick look silly. I can't bear to see Nick taken in. I thought he was too big a person for flattery"
"No one's too big a person for flattery. Why don't you flatter him harder than she does?"
"I won't try to hold him if he wants to go. I won't stoop to her tactics. "You don't dare, for fear you might fail," said the cold doubt that lay in her heart.
"I'm ashamed of myself, talking this way about her. I don't know what's gotten into me. She has been wonderful to us both, and here I am talking like a jealous cat."
"Christabel has always been rather good at making other ladies sound like cats."
"She has done wonderful things for me. She's always doing wonderful things for people. You can't imagine all the presents she gives. And she always includes me when she's talking to Nick. Poor little Ellen, we mustn't let her feel left out—that's the way I think they feel about me, or the way Christabel does, anyway. She has a way of talking to me as if she would be brilliant if I were just worth it."
Uncle Johnnie produced a large fresh handkerchief from under his pillow, and Ellen mopped her eyes.
"When he does things for me, she says she's so glad, that she had hoped he would. She acts as if everything he does is because she's asked him to, as a favor to her. She sends Nick to me—she sends Nick to me!"
"And you receive him sweetly, Patient Griselda?"
"I haven't any pride with him. I haven't any sense. I only love him"
"Of course you may get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing yourself as a martyr, burning in flames of love and pain. That's always a flattering self-portrait."
"Oh, don't, don't! Only I don't know what to do. Help me!"
"He'll never really love you until you hurt him."
"I couldn't
"She does, if I know her."
"Yes, she does, she hurts him terribly. She will have been simply lovely to him, and then she'll get cold and disagreeable and hardly speak to him, and he'll worry over what he's done, and nearly kill himself trying to get her back to being friendly. I've seen him look almost faint with relief when she smiles at him again and talks in a natural voice. I can't believe it's Nick, sometimes. He's always been the moody one—I don't mean moody, that sounds horrid, but he has the artistic temperament."
"So you've done the smoothing and cheering and lifting. Well, my child, a smug self-righteous glow will be all the reward you'll ever get for that. Be selfish, make everybody work and worry, and you'll be adored. I don't know any surer rule. Brace up, Ellen! Grab your young man back, if you want him. The Lord knows why you should, but if you do, grab, and grab hard. Don't be sweet and gentle, don't go on helping Christabel. She doesn't need any help. She doesn't want him the way you do. If she loses him she'll suffer, because wounded vanity hurts, but if you lose him"
"If I lose him" Ellen whispered.
"He has come into her life, and he must kneel to her, or she must be able to ignore him, and evidently she's not able."
"I'm afraid she loves him. You don't know Nick. He's different. She must love him."
"Christabel only loves one person, and it's the love of a lifetime."
"Not Nick? Do you mean Curtis?" But even Ellen, who in her heart believed people must love each other if they were married, didn't believe he meant Curtis.
"Don't be silly, Ellen. Christabel loves Christabel."
"Oh! I never thought of that. But then—why does she bother with other people? Why is she trying to take Nick from me?"
"She is a sea-anemone. She takes the things that feed her; she ejects everything else. A sea-anemone looks like a delicate flower, pink or cream or lilac, with its tentacles moving as gently as petals in a breeze, but it can send out a shower of stinging tiny darts, and it can grasp what it wants."
Ellen turned her head, and Christabel's flowers, cool and smooth, brushed her hot wet cheek.
"Oh, I don't want to hate her!"
"Don't hate her. Be sorry for her. She's gotten to depend on adulation until she's frantic without it, and, like all drugs, the dose has to be increased and increased. Be sorry for her, but, if you want your young man, fight like the devil."
"I'll try." She laughed shakily, putting her forehead down on his thin old hand, exhausted and relieved by confession. Then she went to the mirror, to see eyes as red as if they had been boiled, a nose glowing like a mulberry under the powder she piled on it.
In the mirror she saw that Uncle Johnnie had closed his eyes. I've exhausted him, she thought, remorsefully. There was almost no one there—the bedclothes were nearly flat. The tired old face was as transparently white as if it had been carved from alabaster. She felt weak with love and pity. But as his starched lion-tamer came in with what she announced as "Mr. Caine's five-o'clock nourishment," he gave Ellen a look that sent her away laughing through her lightened unhappiness.