Jupiter Lights

“Not now. But he will be safe at Romney.”

“In Heaven’s name, then, let us get him back to Romney.”

“Yes; to-morrow.”

Little Jack was asleep in his crib by the side of Eve’s bed, for she still kept him with her at night. Cicely went to the crib and looked at her child; Eve followed her.

The little boy’s night-dress had fallen open, revealing one shoulder and arm. “It was just here,” whispered Cicely, kneeling down and softly touching the baby-flesh. She looked up at Eve, her eyes thick with tears.

“Why, you care?” said Eve. “Care for him? – the baby, I mean.” She spoke her thoughts aloud, unwittingly.

“Did you think I didn’t care?” asked Cicely, with a smile.

It was the strangest smile Eve had ever seen.

VIII

EARLY spring at Romney. The yellow jessamine was nearly gone, the other flowers were coming out; Atamasco lilies shone whitely everywhere; the long line of the islands and the opposite mainland were white with blossoms, the salt-marshes were freshly green; shoals, which had wallowed under water since Christmas, lifted their heads; the great river came back within its banks again.

Three weeks had passed since their return to the island. They had made the journey without the judge, who had remained in South Carolina to give his aid to the widow of his old friend, Roland Pettigru, who had become involved in a lawsuit. The three weeks had been slow and anxious – anxious, that is, to Eve. Cicely had returned to her muteness. Once, at the beginning, when Eve had pressed her with questions, she said, as general answer, “In any case, Ferdie will not come here.” After that, when again – once or twice – Eve had asked, “Have you heard anything more?” Cicely had returned no reply whatever; she had let her passive glance rest upon Eve and then glide to something else, as though she had not spoken. Eve was proud, she too remained silent. She knew that she had done nothing to win Cicely’s confidence; women understand women, and Cicely had perceived from the first, of course, that Jack’s sister did not like her.

But since that midnight revelation at Cousin Sarah Cray’s, Eve no longer disliked Cicely; on the contrary, she was attracted towards her by a sort of unwilling surprise. Often, when they were with the others, she would look at her twenty times in a half-hour, endeavoring to fathom something of the real nature of this little girl (to Eve, Cicely always seemed a school-girl), who had borne a tragedy in silence, covering it with her jests, covering it also with her coldness. But was Cicely really cold to all the world but Ferdie? She was not so, at least, as regarded her child; no one who had seen her on her knees that night beside the crib could doubt her love for him. Yet she let Eve have him for hours at a time, she let her have him at night, without even Dilsey to look after him; she never interfered, constantly as Eve claimed him and kept him. In spite of her confidence in her own perceptions, in spite of her confidence, too, in her own will, which she believed could force a solution in almost every case, Eve Bruce was obliged to acknowledge to herself that she was puzzled.

Now and then she would be harassed by the question as to whether she ought not to tell Miss Sabrina what she knew, whether she ought not to tell the judge. But Cicely had spared them, and Cicely had asked her to be equally merciful. At night, when lying awake, the horror of the poor baby’s broken arm would sometimes come to her so vividly that she would light the candle in haste to see if he were safe. If Ferdie should come here, after all! Cicely had said that he would not; but who could trust Cicely, – loving the man as she did? To Eve, after all that had happened, Cicely’s love seemed a mania as insane as the homicidal deliriums of the husband.

As to these deliriums, she tried to picture what they must be: the baby hurled from his little crib – that made her shudder with rage; she should not be afraid of the madman, then; she should attack him in return! Sometimes it was Cicely whom she saw, Cicely, shrinking under blows; it must have been something heavy and sharp, a billet of wood, perhaps, that had caused the scars across her white breast. She remembered that once, when inwardly exasperated by Cicely’s fresh fairness, she had accused her of never having known what it was to be really tired in all her life. Cicely had answered, rather hesitatingly, “I don’t know that I have ever been tired, exactly.” She had not been tired – no. She had only been half killed.

The poor little girl’s muteness, her occasional outbursts of wild sport, her jests and laughter, her abstractions, and the coldness sometimes seen in her beautiful eyes, were these the results of suffering? She questioned Miss Sabrina a little.

“She has always been the same, except that since her second marriage she is much more quiet,” replied the unconscious aunt. “Until then she was like quicksilver, she used to run through the thickets so swiftly that no one could follow her, and she used to play ball by the hour with – ” Here the speaker paused, disconcerted.

“With Jack,” Eve added, her face contracting with the old pain.

Miss Sabrina had at last perceived this pain, and the discovery had stopped her affectionate allusions. But she did not forget – Eve often found her carefully made wreaths laid upon Jack’s grave. As for Eve herself, she never brought a flower; she walked to and fro beside the mound, and the sojourn generally ended in angry thoughts. Why should other people keep their loved ones, and she be bereft? What had she done, what had Jack done, that was so wrong? God was not good, because He was not kind; people did not ask Him to create them, but when once He had done it for His own pleasure, and there they were, helpless, in His world, why should He torture them so? To make them better? Why didn’t He make them better in the beginning, when He was creating them? Or else not make them at all!