In another mood, Bartley might have stepped aside to look in on the Squire, before asking at the house door for Marcia. They relished each other’s company, as people of contrary opinions and of no opinions are apt to do. Bartley loved to hear the Squire get going, as he said, and the old man felt a fascination in the youngster. Bartley was smart; he took a point as quick as lightning; and the Squire did not mind his making friends with the Mammon of Righteousness, as he called the visible church in Equity. It amused him to see Bartley lending the church the zealous support of the press, with an impartial patronage of the different creeds. There had been times in his own career when the silence of his opinions would have greatly advanced him, but he had not chosen to pay this price for success; he liked his freedom, or he liked the bitter tang of his own tongue too well, and he had remained a leading lawyer in Equity, when he might have ended a judge, or even a Congressman. Of late years, however, since people whom he could have joined in their agnosticism so heartily, up to a certain point, had begun to make such fools of themselves about Darwinism and the brotherhood of all men in the monkey, he had grown much more tolerant. He still clung to his old-fashioned deistical opinions; but he thought no worse of a man for not holding them; he did not deny that a man might be a Christian, and still be a very good man.
The audacious humor of his position sufficed with a people who liked a joke rather better than anything else; in his old age, his infidelity was something that would hardly have been changed, if possible, by a popular vote. Even his wife, to whom it had once been a heavy cross, borne with secret prayer and tears, had long ceased to gainsay it in any wise. Her family had opposed her yoking with an unbeliever when she married him, but she had some such hopes of converting him as women cherish who give themselves to men confirmed in drunkenness. She learned, as other women do, that she could hardly change her husband in the least of his habits, and that, in this great matter of his unbelief, her love was powerless. It became easier at last for her to add self-sacrifice to self-sacrifice than to vex him with her anxieties about his soul, and to act upon the feeling that, if he must be lost, then she did not care to be saved. He had never interfered with her church-going; he had rather promoted it, for he liked to have women go; but the time came when she no longer cared to go without him; she lapsed from her membership, and it was now many years since she had worshipped with the people of her faith, if, indeed, she were still of any faith. Her life was silenced in every way, and, as often happens with aging wives in country towns, she seldom went out of her own door, and never appeared at the social or public solemnities of the village. Her husband and her daughter composed and bounded her world, — she always talked of them, or of other things as related to them. She had grown an elderly woman, without losing the color of her yellow hair; and the bloom of girlhood had been stayed in her cheeks as if by the young habit of blushing, which she had kept. She was still what her neighbors called very pretty-appearing, and she must have been a beautiful girl. The silence of her inward life subdued her manner, till now she seemed always to have come from some place on which a deep hush had newly fallen.
She answered the door when Bartley turned the crank that snapped the gong-bell in its centre; and the young man, who was looking at the street while waiting for some one to come, confronted her with a start. “Oh!” he said, “I thought it was Marcia. Good morning, Mrs. Gaylord. Isn’t Marcia at home?”
“She went to church, this morning,” replied her mother. “Won’t you walk in?”
“Why, yes, I guess I will, thank you,” faltered Bartley, in the irresolution of his disappointment. “I hope I sha’n’t disturb you.”
“Come right into the sitting-room. She won’t be gone a great while, now,” said Mrs. Gaylord, leading the way to the large square room into which a door at the end of the narrow hall opened. A slumberous heat from a sheet-iron wood-stove pervaded the place, and a clock ticked monotonously on a shelf in the corner. Mrs. Gaylord said, “Won’t you take a chair?” and herself sank into the rocker, with a deep feather cushion in the seat, and a thinner feather cushion tied half-way up the back. After the more active duties of her housekeeping were done, she sat every day in this chair with her knitting or sewing, and let the clock tick the long hours of her life away, with no more apparent impatience of them, or sense of their dulness, than the cat on the braided rug at her feet, or the geraniums in the pots at the sunny window. “Are you pretty well to-day?” she asked.
“Well, no, Mrs. Gaylord, I’m not,” answered Bartley. “I’m all out of sorts. I haven’t felt so dyspeptic for I don’t know how long.”
Mrs. Gaylord smoothed the silk dress across her lap, — the thin old black silk which she still instinctively put on for Sabbath observance, though it was so long since she had worn it to church. “Mr. Gaylord used to have it when we were first married, though he aint been troubled with it of late years. He seemed to think then it was worse Sundays.”
“I don’t believe Sunday has much to do with it, in my case. I ate some mince-pie and some toasted cheese last night, and I guess they didn’t agree with me very well,” said Bartley, who did not spare himself the confession of his sins when seeking sympathy: it was this candor that went so far to convince people of his good-heartedness.
“I don’t know as I ever heard that meat-pie was bad,” said Mrs. Gaylord, thoughtfully. “Mr. Gaylord used to eat it right along all through his dyspepsia, and he never complained of it. And the cheese ought to have made it digest.”
“Well, I don’t know what it was,” replied Bartley, plaintively submitting to be exonerated, “but I feel perfectly used up. Oh, I suppose I shall get over it, or forget all about it, by to-morrow,” he added, with strenuous cheerfulness. “It isn’t anything worth minding.”
Mrs. Gaylord seemed to differ with him on this point. “Head ache any?” she asked.
“It did this morning, when I first woke up,” Bartley assented.
“I don’t believe but what a cup of tea would be the best thing for you,” she said, critically.
Bartley had instinctively practised a social art which ingratiated him with people at Equity as much as his demands for sympathy endeared him: he gave trouble in little unusual ways. He now said, “Oh, I wish you would give me a cup, Mrs. Gaylord.”
“Why, yes, indeed! That’s just what I was going to,” she replied. She went to the kitchen, which lay beyond another room, and reappeared with the tea directly, proud of her promptness, but having it on her conscience to explain it. “I ‘most always keep the pot on the stove hearth, Sunday morning, so’s to have it ready if Mr. Gaylord ever wants a cup. He’s a master hand for tea, and always was. There: I guess you better take it without milk. I put some sugar in the saucer, if you want any.” She dropped noiselessly upon her feather cushion again, and Bartley, who had risen to receive the tea from her, remained standing while he drank it.
“That does seem to go to the spot,” he said, as he sipped it, thoughtfully observant of its effect upon his disagreeable feelings. “I wish I had you to take care of me, Mrs. Gaylord, and keep me from making a fool of myself,” he added, when he had drained the cup. “No, no!” he cried, at her offering to take it from him. “I’ll set it down. I know it will fret you to have it in here, and I’ll carry it out into the kitchen.” He did so before she could prevent him, and came back, touching his mustache with his handkerchief. “I declare, Mrs. Gaylord, I should love to live in a kitchen like that.”
“I guess you wouldn’t if you had to,” said Mrs. Gaylord, flattered into a smile. “Marcia, she likes to sit out there, she says, better than anywheres in the house. But I always tell her it’s because she was there so much when she was little. I don’t see as she seems over-anxious to do anything there but sit, I tell her. Not but what she knows how well enough. Mr. Gaylord, too, he’s great for being round in the kitchen. If he gets up in the night, when he has his waking spells, he had rather take his lamp out there, if there’s a fire left, and read, any time, than what h
e would in the parlor. Well, we used to sit there together a good deal when we were young, and he got the habit of it. There’s everything in habit,” she added, thoughtfully. “Marcia, she’s got quite in the way, lately, of going to the Methodist church.”
“Yes, I’ve seen her there. You know I board round at the different churches, as the schoolmaster used to at the houses in the old times.”
Mi’s. Gaylord looked up at the clock, and gave a little nervous laugh. “I don’t know what Marcia will say to my letting her company stay in the sitting-room. She’s pretty late to-day. But I guess you won’t have much longer to wait, now.”
She spoke with that awe of her daughter and her judgments which is one of the pathetic idiosyncrasies of a certain class of American mothers. They feel themselves to be not so well educated as their daughters, whose fancied knowledge of the world they let outweigh their own experience of life; they are used to deferring to them, and they shrink willingly into household drudges before them, and leave them to order the social affairs of the family. Mrs. Gaylord was not much afraid of Bartley for himself, but as Marcia’s company he made her more and more uneasy toward the end of the quarter of an hour in which she tried to entertain him with her simple talk, varying from Mr. Gaylord to Marcia, and from Marcia to Mr. Gaylord again. When she recognized the girl’s quick touch in the closing of the front door, and her elastic step approached through the hall, the mother made a little deprecating noise in her throat, and fidgeted in her chair. As soon as Marcia opened the sitting-room door, Mrs. Gaylord modestly rose and went out into the kitchen: the mother who remained in the room when her daughter had company was an oddity almost unknown in Equity.
Marcia’s face flashed all into a light of joy at sight of Bartley, who scarcely waited for her mother to be gone before he drew her toward him by the hand she had given. She mechanically yielded; and then, as if the recollection of some new resolution forced itself through her pleasure at sight of him, she freed her hand, and, retreating a step or two, confronted him.
“Why, Marcia,” he said, “what’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she answered.
It might have amused Bartley, if he had felt quite well, to see the girl so defiant of him, when she was really so much in love with him, but it certainly did not amuse him now: it disappointed him in his expectation of finding her femininely soft and comforting, and he did not know just what to do. He stood staring at her in discomfiture, while she gained in outward composure, though her cheeks were of the Jacqueminot red of the ribbon at her throat. “What have I done, Marcia?” he faltered.
“Oh, you haven’t done anything.”
“Some one has been talking to you against me.”
“No one has said a word to me about you.”
“Then why are you so cold — so strange — so — so — different?”
“Different?”
“Yes, from what you were last night,” he answered, with an aggrieved air.
“Oh, we see some things differently by daylight,” she lightly explained. “Won’t you sit down?”
“No, thank you,” Bartley replied, sadly but unresentfully. “I think I had better be going. I see there is something wrong—”
“I don’t see why you say there is anything wrong,” she retorted. “What have I done?”
“Oh, you have not done anything; I take it back. It is all right. But when I came here this morning — encouraged — hoping — that you had the same feeling as myself, and you seem to forget everything but a ceremonious acquaintanceship — why, it is all right, of course. I have no reason to complain; but I must say that I can’t help being surprised.” He saw her lips quiver and her bosom heave. “Marcia, do you blame me for feeling hurt at your coldness when I came here to tell you — to tell you I — I love you?” With his nerves all unstrung, and his hunger for sympathy, he really believed that he had come to tell her this. “Yes,” he added, bitterly, “I will tell you, though it seems to be the last word I shall speak to you. I’ll go, now.”
“Bartley! You shall never go!” she cried, throwing herself in his way. “Do you think I don’t care for you, too? You may kiss me, — you may kill me, now!”
The passionate tears sprang to her eyes, without the sound of sobs or the contortion of weeping, and she did not wait for his embrace. She flung her arms around his neck and held him fast, crying, “I wouldn’t let you, for your own sake, darling; and if I had died for it — I thought I should die last night — I was never going to let you kiss me again till you said — till — till — now! Don’t you see?” She caught him tighter, and hid her face in his neck, and cried and laughed for joy and shame, while he suffered her caresses with a certain bewilderment. “I want to tell you now — I want to explain,” she said, lifting her face and letting him from her as far as her arms, caught around his neck, would reach, and fervidly searching his eyes, lest some ray of what he would think should escape her. “Don’t speak a word first! Father saw us at the door last night, — he happened to be coming downstairs, because he couldn’t sleep, — just when you — Oh, Bartley, don’t!” she implored, at the little smile that made his mustache quiver. “And he asked me whether we were engaged; and when I couldn’t tell him we were, I know what he thought. I knew how he despised me, and I determined that, if you didn’t tell me that you cared for me — And that’s the reason, Bartley, and not — not because I didn’t care more for you than I do for the whole world. And — and — you don’t mind it, now, do you? It was for your sake, dearest.”
Whether Bartley perfectly divined or not all the feeling at which her words hinted, it was delicious to be clung about by such a pretty girl as Marcia Gaylord, to have her now darting her face into his neck-scarf with intolerable consciousness, and now boldly confronting him with all-defying fondness while she lightly pushed him and pulled him here and there in the vehemence of her appeal. Perhaps such a man, in those fastnesses of his nature which psychology has not yet explored, never loses, even in the tenderest transports, the sense of prey as to the girl whose love he has won; but if this is certain, it is also certain that he has transports which are tender, and Bartley now felt his soul melted with affection that was very novel and sweet.
“Why, Marcia!” he said, “what a strange girl you are!” He sunk into his chair again, and, putting his arms around her waist, drew her upon his knee, like a child.
She held herself apart from him at her arm’s length, and said, “Wait! Let me say it before it seems as if we had always been engaged, and everything was as right then as it is now. Did you despise me for letting you kiss me before we were engaged?”
“No,” he laughed again. “I liked you for it.”
“But if you thought I would let any one else, you wouldn’t have liked it?”
This diverted him still more. “I shouldn’t have liked that more than half as well.”
“No,” she said thoughtfully. She dropped her face awhile on his shoulder, and seemed to be struggling with herself. Then she lifted it, and “Did you ever — did you—” she gasped.
“If you want me to say that all the other girls in the world are not worth a hair of your head, I’ll say that, Marcia. Now, let’s talk business!”
This made her laugh, and “I shall want a little lock of yours,” she said, as if they had hitherto been talking of nothing but each other’s hair.
“And I shall want all of yours,” he answered.
“No. Don’t be silly.” She critically explored his face. “How funny to have a mole in your eyebrow!” She put her finger on it. “I never saw it before.”
“You never looked so closely. There’s a scar at the corner of your upper lip that I hadn’t noticed.”
“Can you see that?” she demanded, radiantly. “Well, you have got good eyes! The cat did it when I was a little girl.”
The door opened, and Mrs. Gaylord surprised them in the celebration of these discoveries, — or, rather, she surprised herself, for she stood holding the door and helple
ss to move, though in her heart she had an apologetic impulse to retire, and she even believed that she made some murmurs of excuse for her intrusion. Bartley was equally abashed, but Marcia rose with the coolness of her sex in the intimate emergencies which confound a man. “Oh, mother, it’s you! I forgot about you. Come in! Or I’ll set the table, if that’s what you want.” As Mrs. Gaylord continued to look from her to Bartley in her daze, Marcia added, simply, “We’re engaged, mother. You may as well know it first as last, and I guess you better know it first.”
Her mother appeared not to think it safe to relax her hold upon the door, and Bartley went filially to her rescue — if it was rescue to salute her blushing defencelessness as he did. A confused sense of the extraordinary nature and possible impropriety of the proceeding may have suggested her husband to her mind; or it may have been a feeling that some remark was expected of her, even in the mental destitution to which she was reduced.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 144
