“Yes, you will always find me obedient when commanded to go out and repair my wasted tissue.”
“I don’t mean that, dear,” she said softly. “I mean — your not quarrelling with me when I’m unreasonable. Why can’t we always do so!”
“Well, you see,” said Bartley, “it throws the whole burden on the fellow in his senses. It doesn’t require any great degree of self-sacrifice to fly off at a tangent, but it’s rather a maddening spectacle to the party that holds on.”
“Now I will show you,” said Marcia, “that I can be reasonable too: I shall let you go alone to make our party call on Miss Kingsbury.” She looked at him heroically.
“Marcia,” said Bartley, “you’re such a reasonable person when you’re the most unreasonable, that I wonder I ever quarrel with you. I rather think I’ll let you call on Miss Kingsbury alone. I shall suffer agonies of suspicion, but it will prove that I have perfect confidence in you.” He threw her a kiss from the door, and ran down the stairs. When he returned, an hour later, he found her waiting up for him. “Why, Marcia!” he exclaimed.
“Oh! I just wanted to say that we will both go to call on her very soon. If I sent you, she might think I was mad, and I won’t give her that satisfaction.”
“Noble girl!” cried Bartley, with irony that pleased her better than praise. Women like to be understood, even when they try not to be understood.
When Marcia went with Bartley to call, Miss Kingsbury received her with careful, perhaps anxious politeness, but made no further effort to take her up. Some of the people whom Marcia met at Miss Kingsbury’s called; and the Witherbys came, father, mother, and daughter together; but between the evident fact that the Hubbards were poor, and the other evident fact that they moved in the best society, the Witherbys did not quite know what to do about them. They asked them to dinner, and Bartley went alone; Marcia was not well enough to go.
He was very kind and tractable, now, and went whenever she bade him go without her, though tea at the Hallecks was getting to be an old story with him, and it was generally tea at the Hallecks to which she sent him. The Halleck ladies came faithfully to see her, and she got on very well with the two older sisters, who gave her all the kindness they could spare from their charities, and seemed pleased to have her so pretty and conjugal, though these things were far from them. But she was afraid of Olive at first, and disliked her as a friend of Miss Kingsbury. This rather attracted the odd girl. What she called Marcia’s snubs enabled her to declare in her favor with a sense of disinterestedness, and to indulge her repugnance for Bartley with a good heart. She resented his odious good looks, and held it a shame that her mother should promote his visible tendency to stoutness by giving him such nice things for tea.
“Now, I like Mr. Hubbard,” said her mother placidly. “It’s very kind of him to come to such plain folks as we are, whenever we ask him; now that his wife can’t come, I know he does it because he likes us.”
“Oh, he comes for the eating,” said Olive, scornfully. Then another phase of her mother’s remark struck her: “Why, mother!” she cried, “I do believe you think Bartley Hubbard’s a distinguished man somehow!”
“Your father says it’s very unusual for such a young man to be in a place like his. Mr. Witherby really leaves everything to him, he says.”
“Well, I think he’d better not, then! The Events has got to be perfectly horrid, of late. It’s full of murders and all uncleanness.”
“That seems to be the way with the papers, nowadays. Your father hears that the Events is making money.”
“Why, mother! What a corrupt old thing you are! I believe you’ve been bought up by that disgusting interview with father. Nestor of the Leather Interest! Father ought to have turned him out of doors. Well, this family is getting a little too good, for me! And Ben’s almost as bad as any of you, of late, — I haven’t a bit of influence with him any more. He seems determined to be friendlier with that person than ever; he’s always trying to do him good, — I can see it, and it makes me sick. One thing I know: I’m going to stop Mr. Hubbard’s calling me Olive. Impudent!”
Mrs. Halleck shifted her ground with the pretence which women use, even amongst themselves, of having remained steadfast. “He is a very good husband.”
“Oh, because he likes to be!” retorted her daughter. “Nothing is easier than to be a good husband.”
“Ah, my dear,” said Mrs. Halleck, “wait till you have tried.”
This made Olive laugh; but she answered with an argument that always had weight with her mother, “Ben doesn’t think he’s a good husband.”
“What makes you think so, Olive?” asked her mother.
“I know he dislikes him intensely.”
“Why, you just said yourself, dear, that he was friendlier with him than ever.”
“Oh, that’s nothing. The more he disliked him the kinder he would be to him.”
“That’s true,” sighed her mother. “Did he ever say anything to you about him?”
“No,” cried Olive, shortly; “he never speaks of people he doesn’t like.”
The mother returned, with logical severity, “All that doesn’t prove that Ben thinks he isn’t a good husband.”
“He dislikes him. Do you believe a bad man can be a good husband, then?”
“No,” Mrs. Halleck admitted, as if confronted with indisputable proof of Bartley’s wickedness.
In the mean time the peace between Bartley and Marcia continued unbroken, and these days of waiting, of suffering, of hoping and dreading, were the happiest of their lives. He did his best to be patient with her caprices and fretfulness, and he was at least manfully comforting and helpful, and instant in atonement for every failure. She said a thousand times that she should die without him; and when her time came, he thought that she was going to die before he could tell her of his sorrow for all that he had ever done to grieve her. He did not tell her, though she lived to give him the chance; but he took her and her baby both into his arms, with tears of as much fondness as ever a man shed. He even began his confession; but she said, “Hush! you never did a wrong thing yet that I didn’t drive you to.” Pale and faint, she smiled joyfully upon him, and put her hand on his head when he hid his face against hers on the pillow, and put her lips against his cheek. His heart was full; he was grateful for the mercy that had spared him; he was so strong in his silent repentance that he felt like a good man.
“Bartley,” she said, “I’m going to ask a great favor of you.”
“There’s nothing that I can do that I shall think a favor, darling!” he cried, lifting his face to look into hers.
“Write for mother to come. I want her!”
“Why, of course.” Marcia continued to look at him, and kept the quivering hold she had laid of his hand when he raised his head. “Was that all?”
She was silent, and he added, “I will ask your father to come with her.”
She hid her face for the space of one sob. “I wanted you to offer.”
“Why, of course! of course!” he replied.
She did not acknowledge his magnanimity directly, but she lifted the coverlet and showed him the little head on her arm, and the little creased and crumpled face.
“Pretty?” she asked. “Bring me the letter before you send it. — Yes, that is just right, — perfect!” she sighed, when he came back and read the letter to her; and she fell away to happy sleep.
Her father answered that he would come with her mother as soon as he got the better of a cold he had taken. It was now well into the winter, and the journey must have seemed more formidable in Equity than in Boston. But Bartley was not impatient of his father-in-law’s delay, and he set himself cheerfully about consoling Marcia for it. She stole her white, thin hand into his, and now and then gave it a little pressure to accent the points she made in talking.
“Father was the first one I thought of — after you, Bartley. It seems to me as if baby came half to show me how unfeeling I had been to him. Of cours
e, I’m not sorry I ran away and asked you to take me back, for I couldn’t have had you if I hadn’t done it; but I never realized before how cruel it was to father. He always made such a pet of me; and I know that he thought he was acting for the best.”
“I knew that you were,” said Bartley, fervently.
“What sweet things you always say to me!” she murmured. “But don’t you see, Bartley, that I didn’t think enough of him? That’s what baby seems to have come to teach me.” She pulled a little away on the pillow, so as to fix him more earnestly with her eyes. “If baby should behave so to you when she grew up, I should hate her!”
He laughed, and said, “Well, perhaps your mother hates you.”
“No, they don’t — either of them,” answered Marcia, with a sigh. “And I behaved very stiffly and coldly with him when he came up to see me, — more than I had any need to. I did it for your sake; but he didn’t mean any harm to you, he just wanted to make sure that I was safe and well.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Marsh.”
“Yes, I know. But what if he had died!”
“Well, he didn’t die,” said Bartley, with a smile. “And you’ve corresponded with them regularly, ever since, and you know they’ve been getting along all right. And it’s going to be altogether different from this out,” he added, leaning back a little weary with a matter in which he could not be expected to take a very cordial interest.
“Truly?” she asked, with one of the eagerest of those hand-pressures.
“It won’t be my fault if it isn’t,” he replied, with a yawn.
“How good you are, Bartley!” she said, with an admiring look, as if it were the goodness of God she was praising.
Bartley released himself, and went to the new crib, in which the baby lay, and with his hands in his pockets stood looking down at it with a curious smile.
“Is it pretty?” she asked, envious of his bird’s-eye view of the baby.
“Not definitively so,” he answered. “I dare say she will smooth out in time; but she seems to be considerably puckered yet.”
“Well,” returned Marcia, with forced resignation, “I shouldn’t let any one else say so.”
Her husband set up a soft, low, thoughtful whistle. “I’ll tell you what, Marcia,” he said presently. “Suppose we name this baby after your father?”
She lifted herself on her elbow, and stared at him as if he must be making fun of her. “Why, how could we?” she demanded. Squire Gaylord’s parents had called his name Flavius Josephus, in a superstition once cherished by old-fashioned people, that the Jewish historian was somehow a sacred writer.
“We can’t name her Josephus, but we can call her Flavia,” said Bartley. “And if she makes up her mind to turn out a blonde, the name will just fit. Flavia, — it’s a very pretty name.” He looked at his wife, who suddenly turned her face down on the pillow.
“Bartley Hubbard,” she cried, “you’re the best man in the world!”
“Oh, no! Only the second-best,” suggested Bartley.
In these days they took their fill of the delight of young fatherhood and motherhood. After its morning bath Bartley was called in, and allowed to revere the baby’s mottled and dimpled back as it lay face downward on the nurse’s lap, feebly wiggling its arms and legs, and responding with ineffectual little sighs and gurgles to her acceptable rubbings with warm flannel. When it was fully dressed, and its long clothes pulled snugly down, and its limp person stiffened into something tenable, he was suffered to take it into his arms, and to walk the room with it. After all, there is not much that a man can actually do with a small baby, either for its pleasure or his own, and Barkley’s usefulness had its strict limitations. He was perhaps most beneficial when he put the child in its mother’s arms, and sat down beside the bed, and quietly talked, while Marcia occasionally put up a slender hand, and smoothed its golden brown hair, bending her neck over to look at it where it lay, with the action of a mother bird. They examined with minute interest the details of the curious little creature: its tiny finger-nails, fine and sharp, and its small queer fist doubled so tight, and closing on one’s finger like a canary’s claw on a perch; the absurdity of its foot, the absurdity of its toes, the ridiculous inadequacy of its legs and arms to the work ordinarily expected of legs and arms, made them laugh. They could not tell yet whether its eyes would be black like Marcia’s, or blue like Bartley’s; those long lashes had the sweep of hers, but its mop of hair, which made it look so odd and old, was more like his in color.
“She will be a dark-eyed blonde,” Bartley decided.
“Is that nice?” asked Marcia.
“With the telescope sight, they’re warranted to kill at five hundred yards.”
“Oh, for shame, Bartley! To talk of baby’s ever killing!”
“Why, that’s what they all come to. It’s what you came to yourself.”
“Yes, I know. But it’s quite another thing with baby.” She began to mumble it with her lips, and to talk baby-talk to it. In their common interest in this puppet they already called each other papa and mamma.
Squire Gaylord came alone, and when Marcia greeted him with “Why, father! Where’s mother?” he asked, “Did you expect her? Well, I guess your mother’s feeling rather too old for such long winter journeys. You know she don’t go out a great deal I guess she expects your family down there in the summer.”
The old man was considerably abashed by the baby when it was put into his arms, and being required to guess its name he naturally failed.
“Flavia!” cried Marcia, joyfully. “Bartley named it after you.”
This embarrassed the Squire still more. “Is that so?” he asked, rather sheepishly. “Well, it’s quite a compliment.”
Marcia repeated this to her husband as evidence that her father was all right now. Bartley and the Squire were in fact very civil to each other; and Bartley paid the old man many marked attentions. He took him to the top of the State House, and walked him all about the city, to show him its points of interest, and introduced him to such of his friends as they met, though the Squire’s dresscoat, whether fully revealed by the removal of his surtout, or betraying itself below the skirt of the latter, was a trial to a fellow of Bartley’s style. He went with his father-in-law to see Mr. Warren in Jefferson Scattering Batkins, and the Squire grimly appreciated the burlesque of the member from Cranberry Centre; but he was otherwise not a very amusable person, and off his own ground he was not conversable, while he refused to betray his impressions of many things that Bartley expected to astonish him. The Events editorial rooms had no apparent effect upon him, though they were as different from most editorial dens as tapestry carpets, black-walnut desks, and swivel chairs could make them. Mr. Witherby covered him with urbanities and praises of Bartley that ought to have delighted him as a father-in-law; but apparently the great man of the Events was but a strange variety of the type with which he was familiar in the despised country editors. He got on better with Mr. Atherton, who was of a man’s profession. The Squire wore his hat throughout their interview, and everywhere except at table and in bed; and as soon as he rose front either, he put it on.
Bartley tried to impress him with such novel traits of cosmopolitan life as a table d’h�te dinner at a French restaurant; but the Squire sat through the courses, as if his barbarous old appetite had satisfied itself in that manner all his life. After that, Bartley practically gave him up; he pleaded his newspaper work, and left the Squire to pass the time as he could in the little house on Clover Street, where he sat half a day at a stretch in the parlor, with his hat on, reading the newspapers, his legs sprawled out towards the grate. In this way he probably reconstructed for himself some image of his wonted life in his office at home, and was for the time at peace; but otherwise he was very restless, except when he was with Marcia. He was as fond of her in his way as he had ever been, and though he apparently cared nothing for the baby, he enjoyed Marcia’s pride in it; and he bore to have it thrust upon him with the
surly mildness of an old dog receiving children’s caresses. He listened with the same patience to all her celebrations of Bartley, which were often tedious enough, for she bragged of him constantly, of his smartness and goodness, and of the great success that had crowned the merit of both in him.
Mr. Halleck had called upon the Squire the morning after his arrival, and brought Marcia a note from his wife, offering to have her father stay with them if she found herself too much crowded at this eventful time. “There! That is just the sort of people the Hallecks are!” she cried, showing the letter to her father. “And to think of our not going near them for months and mouths after we came to Boston, for fear they were stuck up! But Bartley is always just so proud. Now you must go right in, father, and not keep Mr. Halleck waiting. Give me your hat, or you’ll be sure to wear it in the parlor.” She made him stoop down to let her brush his coat-collar a little. “There! Now you look something like.”
Squire Gaylord had never received a visit except on business in his life, and such a thing as one man calling socially upon another, as women did, was unknown to the civilization of Equity. But, as he reported to Marcia, he got along with Mr. Halleck; and he got along with the whole family when he went with Bartley to tea, upon the invitation Mr. Halleck made him that morning. Probably it appeared to him an objectless hospitality; but he spent as pleasant an evening as he could hope to spend with his hat off and in a frock-coat, which he wore as a more ceremonious garment than the dress-coat of his every-day life. He seemed to take a special liking to Olive Halleck, whose habit of speaking her mind with vigor and directness struck him as commendable. It was Olive who made the time pass for him; and as the occasion was not one for personal sarcasm or question of the Christian religion, her task in keeping the old pagan out of rather abysmal silences must have had its difficulties.
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells Page 164
