Chapter 24

Newland and Ellen ate lunch slowly. Quiet thought filled the spaces between sudden talk. Once they began, they found much to say.

Yet their words often stopped. Then long, silent talks seemed to continue between them. Each understood things that neither spoke.

Newland kept the talk away from his life. He did not plan this. He only feared missing one word of Ellen's story.

She leaned forward across the table. Her chin rested on her joined hands. She told him about the last eighteen months.

Ellen grew tired of what people called society. New York was kind to her. Its people almost offered too much welcome.

She would never forget their kindness when she returned. At first, everything there felt new. But that bright first pleasure soon passed.

Ellen felt too different from the others. She could not care about the things they valued. So she decided to try Washington.

People there came from more places. They also held a greater range of ideas. Ellen now expected to make her home there.

She could also make a home for poor Medora. Every other relation lost patience with her. Yet Medora now needed care and protection most.

Without it, she might enter another dangerous marriage.

"But what about Dr. Carver?" Newland asked. "Do you not fear him? He stayed with you at the Blenkers'."

Ellen smiled. "The Carver danger is over. Dr. Carver is very clever. He wants a rich wife to pay for his plans."

"Medora only helps him attract attention. She tells everyone that she accepts his ideas."

"What ideas?"

"Every kind of new and foolish social plan. Still, they interest me. Our friends follow old rules without ever looking at them."

"Worse, those rules came from another country. Why discover America only to copy somewhere else?"

Ellen smiled across the table. "Would Christopher Columbus cross the ocean for this? Would he only attend the opera with the Selfridge Merrys?"

Newland's face changed color. "Do you say such things to Beaufort?"

"I have not seen him for a long time. But I once did, and he understands."

"That is what I always told you. You do not like us. You like Beaufort because he is unlike us."

Newland looked around the plain room. Beyond it lay the bare beach. A line of hard white houses followed the shore.

"We are terribly dull," he said. "We have no character, color, or difference. Why do you not return to Europe?"

Ellen's eyes grew dark. Newland expected an angry answer. Instead, she sat quietly and considered his question.

Fear touched him. Perhaps Ellen also wondered why she stayed.

At last, she answered. "I believe I stay because of you."

She spoke without heat or an invitation. Her words offered nothing to Newland's pride. Still, his face burned to his hair.

He did not dare speak or move. Her words seemed like a rare butterfly, a light insect with bright wings. One small motion might frighten it away.

If he remained still, perhaps more would gather around it.

"At least, you taught me something," Ellen continued. "Beneath New York's dull surface, very fine feelings live."

"They are gentle and easily hurt. Beside them, people from my other life seem cheap. Even the people I loved most seem so."

She pulled her troubled brows together. "I cannot explain it well. My old life's finest pleasures carried a hard price."

"People paid with mean acts and dirty choices. I never understood that before."

Newland wanted to answer sharply. At least she knew those fine pleasures. But the need in her eyes kept him silent.

"I want complete honesty with you and myself," Ellen said. "For a long time, I hoped for this chance."

"I wanted to tell you how you helped me. I wanted to tell you what you made of me."

Newland stared under a dark frown. Then he stopped her with a laugh.

"And what do you think you made of me?"

Ellen's face lost color. "Of you?"

"Yes. You shaped me far more than I shaped you. I married one woman because another told me to."

A quick warmth crossed her pale face. "You promised not to say such things today."

"That is like a woman," Newland said bitterly. "None of you will follow a bad matter to its end."

Ellen lowered her voice. "Is your marriage bad for May?"

Newland stood at the window. His fingers beat against its raised lower frame. Every part of him felt Ellen's gentle care for her cousin.

"We must always think of May," Ellen continued. "You taught me that, did you not?"

"I taught you?" Newland repeated. His empty eyes remained on the sea.

Ellen carefully followed her thought. "Perhaps giving things up has no value. Perhaps we save no one from pain or broken trust."

"Then everything that brought me home is false. My other life seemed poor because no one cared about such duties."

"If these duties mean nothing, they are only a dream."

Newland turned but stayed beside the window. "Then nothing on earth should stop you from going back. Is that your meaning?"

Ellen's eyes held him with desperate force. "Is there truly no reason?"

"Not if you placed every hope on my marriage. My marriage will not give you a fine sight. It cannot keep you here."

Ellen did not answer. Newland continued in a hard voice.

"What use is any of this? You first showed me a real life. In the same moment, you ordered me to continue a false one."

"No person can carry that forever."

"Do not say that," Ellen cried. Tears filled her eyes. "I am carrying it too."

Her arms fell along the table. She left her face completely open to his gaze. It showed her as fully as her whole uncovered body.

Her inner life stood behind it. Newland could not speak. He finally understood everything her face told him.

"You too?" he asked. "During all this time, you too?"

Ellen gave no spoken answer. Tears crossed the edges of her eyes. They moved slowly down her face.

Half the room still lay between them. Neither tried to cross it. Newland almost forgot Ellen's body was present.

Then one of her hands caught his eyes. It lay open on the table. He remembered her little house on Twenty-third Street.

There, he watched the same hand to avoid her face. Now his thoughts turned around it like water around a deep hole.

Still, he did not move closer. He knew a love that lived on kisses and touches. This love was closer than his own bones.

A quick touch could not satisfy it. Newland feared destroying the sound of Ellen's words. He wanted their meaning to remain untouched.

One thought gave him peace. He would never again feel completely alone.

Then the waste of their lives struck him. They stood close, hidden, and safe. Yet separate paths held them like iron chains.

They might as well live on opposite sides of the world.

"What use is this if you will return?" Newland cried.

Beneath those words lay his true question. How could he keep her?

Ellen remained still with lowered eyes. "I shall not go yet."

"Not yet? Then you see a time when you will go?"

Ellen raised her clear eyes. "I promise not to return while you remain strong. I shall stay while we face each other honestly."

Newland fell into his chair. He understood the full meaning. One movement toward Ellen would drive her back.

She would return to the horrors he knew. She might also face dangers he could only imagine. Her answer fixed him to his side of the table.

He accepted that limit like something holy.

"What kind of life is that for you?" he said in pain.

"It is enough while it remains part of your life."

"And my life remains part of yours?"

Ellen nodded.

"That must be everything for both of us?"

"It is everything, is it not?"

Newland suddenly stood. For one moment, he forgot every rule. He saw only the sweetness of Ellen's face.

Ellen rose too. She did not move to meet him or escape. She stood quietly because the hardest task was over.

She only needed to wait. Newland came close. Ellen held out both hands.

They did not stop him, but guided him. Her hands fell into his. Her open arms kept space between their bodies.

Her given-up face spoke everything else. They stood that way for moments, or perhaps much longer. Silence carried all Ellen needed to say.

Newland understood the one thing that mattered. He must never make this meeting their last. He must leave their future in Ellen's care.

He would ask only that she hold it firmly.

"Do not be unhappy," Ellen said. Her voice broke as she removed her hands.

"You will not return?" Newland asked. "You will not go back?"

It was the one future he could not bear.

"I will not go back," Ellen said.

She turned, opened the door, and led him outside. In the public room, the noisy schoolteachers collected their things. They began moving in broken groups toward the landing.

Across the beach, the white steam boat waited at the pier. Sunlight covered the water. Far beyond it, Boston rose through a thin line of grey air.