It is strange, but I feel some reluctance about going up to Eben. God knows we are old enough to be beyond the point where we can either hurt or move each other in the way we once did. I know he is lonely without Olive. What holds me back? Twenty years ago Cornelius might have minded. But now? No, that is not it. It is that there has always been strain, bitterness I suppose, on his side—long before I entered Cornelius’s family, long before Eben ever saw me. His relation to old Judge Chapman was so complex—admiration and contempt, perhaps on both sides. Eben was so ambitious at one time, ruthless. “That boy plays to win, but he doesn’t know how to lose,” I can remember Judge Chapman saying one day when Cornelius beat Eben at tennis and Eben broke his racket in a rage. But of course Judge Chapman didn’t know what was really involved—the burning sense of inferiority because of me, and the will to triumph.

“You have to take it all, don’t you?” Eben said, and Cornelius answered, “Yes, if I can. Why not?”

It was cruel, I must admit. Those two could never possibly understand each other. Eben despised Cornelius as a man born with it all easy, and Cornelius despised Eben as a man who (in Cornelius’s terms) was not a gentleman.

Lucky for him that he met Olive, and late enough so that he was sure of himself and did not need to torture her as he tortured me. I complain about being old, but God knows I am glad not to be young! The young are not afraid enough of lighting dangerous fires. When I think of the risks I took! The young never foresee what feeling is going to cost. It is there like champagne to drink down—and like champagne, catches up before one is quite aware of what is happening. I came very close to falling in love with Eben—so close that I could never tell Cornelius, even now.

But I married into my own world, and that was right for me.

Now the strange thing time accomplishes is that Eben is (at least most people would think so) of my world. He “made it” as they say. What goes on about all that now in his subtle, conflicted, bitter mind? What did he tell the Websters? I felt suddenly shy when Sally talked about him—his charm, his wisdom. Eben wise? Yet there is no doubt that he was a splendid selectman, one of the best the town has ever had. No wonder he was re-elected, and would have been for a third term but for his own wish to resign. That, I think, was the first time Eben ever resigned power by his own wish. Yes, I would like to talk to him now. What is it that holds me back?

Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5