This Side of Glory by Gwen Bristow Page A

Eleanor,” he exclaimed, “don’t look at me as if I’d killed somebody! I tell you it’s all right. There’s some pine land across the road, not worth a picayune, but I can make Mr. Robichaux think it is.”
    She looked him up and down, standing opposite him with her anger like a cold lump in her breast. “Tell me, Kester.” Her voice was hard. “How much do you owe on this plantation?”
    “I told you,” he retorted, “I didn’t know.”
    He stood by the fireplace, his elbow on the mantel. She took a step nearer. “Kester,” she asked, “were you in debt when we married?”
    He tilted his shoulder. “I’m always in debt. It’s my normal state.”
    His casual answer flung her into a fury. “You were in debt when you took the best suite in the hotel for our honeymoon?” she cried. “When you were tipping bellboys a dollar for bringing you a paper? When you served sixteen-year-old Bourbon to your guests? When you brought Cornelia handmade dresses and imported—”
    “Shut up,” said Kester quietly. “And stop screaming.”
    “I didn’t mean to scream. But suppose I do? You can’t keep this a secret forever. That we’ve been living on money that didn’t belong to you. On your smile and your dishonesty. Funny,” she added. “My father told me all this before I married you.”
    “Then why didn’t you listen to him?” asked Kester. He walked over to the liquor cabinet at the side of the room and began pouring himself a drink. His hand was steady, and even when he asked his last question his voice had not changed.
    “I didn’t listen to him,” said Eleanor, “because I loved you. I loved you so much I thought nothing else mattered. But he knew me better than I knew myself. He knew I’d rather scrub floors than spend money that wasn’t mine to spend.”
    Kester did not answer. He was quietly sipping whiskey from a little glass. She wondered if the whiskey had been paid for.
    Eleanor twisted her hands together, feeling crushed under the burden of her disenchantment. “Some day,” she said, “you may know what it has done to me to find this out about you.”
    He gave her an oddly intent look across his glass, and smiled, a bitter little smile. “I always thought,” he said slowly, “you were the one person in the world who’d never let me down.”
    “What have I done except tell you the truth about yourself?”
    “Will you have the kindness to go upstairs?” Kester asked.
    His voice was so icily polite that Eleanor turned without answering and went out. She climbed the spiral staircase and went into her own room. Through the front windows she could see the draperies of moss swinging from the trees and the little feathers of fog blowing in the dark around them. She sat down by the fire, wishing she was given to tears, and wishing it was daylight so she could go out and walk for miles and miles. Any physical reaction would have been easier than merely bearing this silence and this smothering weight of disappointment.
    After a long time she heard Kester climb the stairs and go into his room across the hall. The sound of his door closing gave her a devastating sense of loneliness. There had never been a night before when they had parted in anger. At first she would not believe that he intended to go to bed without speaking to her again. But she heard nothing else. She wished she had never asked that they sleep in separate rooms. If he had had to go to bed in here they would have talked to each other, and they could not have helped saying they were sorry. She stood up, almost ready to go to him and ask his forgiveness. But she stayed where she was; it was not her fault the plantation was mortgaged or that they had lived in luxury on money they had no right to spend. Eleanor resolutely began taking off her clothes. She opened the windows and got into bed.
    She could not go to sleep. She tumbled about, unable to get warm and then unable to find a comfortable place to lie, while her mind was