Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; San Francisco (Calif.) -- Fiction
Then as she stood there, blown by all the strong cross-winds of the
world, Marshall the editor, who knew Eleanor, came hurrying down the
stairs. He saw that wreckage, grown familiar now to them all, saw the
girl standing white of face beside the balustrade; the situation came
over him at once. He opened the door, drew in both the intoxicated
Billy Gray and his daughter. Half an hour later, when Billy could walk
a little--it was a dead, nerveless intoxication with him
nowadays--Eleanor and the foreman took him home in a cab.
In that long day and night, Eleanor strung together a thousand
half-forgotten incidents, neglects and irregularities of life, and
perceived the truth which her whole world had been in conspiracy to
keep from her. Out of the cross-blowing impulses of an immaturity
which was still half childhood--self pity, shame, heroic pride in her
own tragedy, passionate hatreds of a world which harbors such
things--she came to a resolve in whose very completeness she was happy
for a time. When, before breakfast, she burst into Mattie Tiffany's
boudoir, she had a saintly radiance in her face. The elder woman,
advised by the first words that Eleanor knew, took the little, cold
body into bed with her, petted her back to something like calm. Storm
followed the calm; Eleanor went all to pieces in a burst of passionate
crying.
After she had recovered a little, her purpose came out of her.
Considering her years, she said it all quite simply and
undramatically. It was her business to be with her father. Her mother
would have wished it so. She was going to leave school. That was her
work.
Mattie Tiffany, with her passion for picturesque philanthropies, knew
right well that she had neglected somewhat the plain, unpicturesque
philanthropy which lay close to her hand. She had neither the heart
nor the conscience to deny Eleanor this sacrifice. In that hour, there
grew up between the childless aunt and the motherless niece an
understanding which those three years of first infancy, when Eleanor
had lain on her breast like a daughter, had never brought at all.
In three months more, during which time Billy Gray reformed, lapsed,
reformed, lapsed again, the wiser head of Judge Tiffany found the way.
The Sturtevant estate, nearly fifty thousand dollars in all, lay in
his hands as trustee. Upon Eleanor's majority, it was to be divided,
one third accruing to her, the surviving grandchild, and two-thirds to
Mattie Tiffany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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