The old man now looked at him as if he no longer saw him, and Bartley went out, balked of his purpose in part, and in that degree so much the more embittered.
Squire g.a.y.l.o.r.d remained an hour longer; then he blew out his lamp, and left the little office for the night. A light was burning in the kitchen, and he made his way round to the back door of the house, and let himself in. His wife was there, sitting before the stove, in those last delicious moments before going to bed, when all the house is mellowed to such a warmth that it seems hard to leave it to the cold and dark. In this poor lady, who had so long denied herself spiritual comfort, there was a certain obscure luxury: she liked little dainties of the table; she liked soft warmth, an easy cushion. It was doubtless in the disintegration of the finer qualities of her nature, that, as they grew older together, she threw more and more the burden of acute feeling upon her husband, to whose doctrine of life she had submitted, but had never been reconciled. Marriage is, with all its disparities, a much more equal thing than appears, and the meek little wife, who has all the advantage of public sympathy, knows her power over her oppressor, and at some tender spot in his affections or his nerves can inflict an anguish that will avenge her for years of coa.r.s.er aggression.
Thrown in upon herself in so vital a matter as her religion, Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d had involuntarily come to live largely for herself, though her talk was always of her husband. She gave up for him, as she believed, her soul"s salvation, but she held him to account for the uttermost farthing of the price. She padded herself round at every point where she could have suffered through her sensibilities, and lived soft and snug in the shelter of his iron will and indomitable courage. It was not apathy that she had felt when their children died one after another, but an obscure and formless exultation that Mr. g.a.y.l.o.r.d would suffer enough for both.
Marcia was the youngest, and her mother left her training almost wholly to her father; she sometimes said that she never supposed the child would live. She did not actually urge this in excuse, but she had the appearance of doing so; and she held aloof from them both in their mutual relations, with mildly critical reserves. They spoiled each other, as father and daughter are apt to do when left to themselves. What was good in the child certainly received no harm from his indulgence; and what was naughty was after all not so very naughty. She was pa.s.sionate, but she was generous; and if she showed a jealous temperament that must hereafter make her unhappy, for the time being it charmed and flattered her father to have her so fond of him that she could not endure any rivalry in his affection.
Her education proceeded fitfully. He would not let her be forced to household tasks that she disliked; and as a little girl she went to school chiefly because she liked to go, and not because she would have been obliged to it if she had not chosen. When she grew older, she wished to go away to school, and her father allowed her; he had no great respect for boarding-schools, but if Marcia wanted to try it, he was willing to humor the joke.
What resulted was a great proficiency in the things that pleased her, and ignorance of the other things. Her father bought her a piano, on which she did not play much, and he bought her whatever dresses she fancied. He never came home from a journey without bringing her something; and he liked to take her with him when he went away to other places. She had been several times at Portland, and once at Montreal; he was very proud of her; he could not see that any one was better-looking, or dressed any better than his girl.
He came into the kitchen, and sat down with his hat on, and, taking his chin between his fingers, moved uneasily about on his chair.
"What"s brought you in so early?" asked his wife.
"Well, I got through," he briefly explained. After a while he said, "Bartley Hubbard"s been out there."
"You don"t mean "t he knew she--"
"No, he didn"t know anything about that. He came to tell me he was going away."
"Well, I don"t know what you"re going to do, Mr. g.a.y.l.o.r.d," said his wife, shifting the responsibility wholly upon him. ""D he seem to want to make it up?"
"M-no!" said the Squire, "he was on his high horse. He knows he aint in any danger now."
"Aint you afraid she"ll carry on dreadfully, when she finds out "t he"s gone for good?" asked Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d, with a sort of implied satisfaction that the carrying on was not to affect her.
"M-yes," said the Squire, "I suppose she"ll carry on. But I don"t know what to do about it. Sometimes I almost wish I"d tried to make it up between "em that day; but I thought she"d better see, once for all, what sort of man she was going in for, if she married him. It"s too late now to do anything.
The fellow came in to-night for a quarrel, and nothing else; I could see that; and I didn"t give him any chance."
"You feel sure," asked Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d, impartially, "that Marcia wa"n"t too particular?"
"No, Miranda, I don"t feel sure of anything, except that it"s past your bed-time. You better go. I"ll sit up awhile yet. I came in because I couldn"t settle my mind to anything out there."
He took off his hat in token of his intending to spend the rest of the evening at home, and put it on the table at his elbow.
His wife sewed at the mending in her lap, without offering to act upon his suggestion. "It"s plain to be seen that she can"t get along without him."
"She"ll have to, now," replied the Squire.
"I"m afraid," said Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d, softly, "that she"ll be down sick. She don"t look as if she"d slept any great deal since she"s been gone. I d"
know as I like very much to see her looking the way she does. I guess you"ve got to take her off somewheres."
"Why, she"s just been off, and couldn"t stay!"
"That"s because she thought he was here yet. But if he"s gone, it won"t be the same thing."
"Well, we"ve got to fight it out, some way," said the Squire. "It wouldn"t do to give in to it now. It always _was_ too much of a one-sided thing, at the best; and if we tried now to mend it up, it would be ridiculous. I don"t believe he would come back at all, now, and if he did, he wouldn"t come back on any equal terms. He"d want to have everything his own way.
M-no!" said the Squire, as if confirming himself in a conclusion often reached already in his own mind, "I saw by the way he began to-night that there wasn"t anything to be done with him. It was fight from the word go."
"Well," said Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d, with gentle, sceptical interest in the outcome, "if you"ve made up your mind to that, I hope you"ll be able to carry it through."
"That"s what I"ve made up my mind to," said her husband.
Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d rolled up the sewing in her work-basket, and packed it away against the side, bracing it with several pairs of newly darned socks and stockings neatly folded one into the other. She took her time for this, and when she rose at last to go out, with her basket in her hand, the door opened in her face, and Marcia entered. Mrs. g.a.y.l.o.r.d shrank back, and then slipped round behind her daughter and vanished. The girl took no notice of her mother, but went and sat down on her father"s knee, throwing her arms round his neck, and dropping her haggard face on his shoulder. She had arrived at home a few hours earlier, having driven over from a station ten miles distant, on a road that did not pa.s.s near Equity. After giving as much of a shock to her mother"s mild nature as it was capable of receiving by her unexpected return, she had gone to her own room, and remained ever since without seeing her father. He put up his thin old hand and pa.s.sed it over her hair, but it was long before either of them spoke.
At last Marcia lifted her head, and looked her father in the face with a smile so pitiful that he could not bear to meet it. "Well, father?" she said.
"Well, Marsh," he answered huskily. "What do you think of me now?"
"I"m glad to have you back again," he replied.
"You know why I came?"
"Yes, I guess I know."
She put down her head again, and moaned and cried, "Father! Father!" with dry sobs. When she looked up, confronting him with her tearless eyes, "What shall I do? What shall I do?" she demanded desolately.
He tried to clear his throat to speak, but it required more than one effort to bring the words. "I guess you better go along with me up to Boston. I"m going up the first of the week."
"No," she said quietly.
"The change would do you good. It"s a long while since you"ve been away from home," her father urged.
She looked at him in sad reproach of his uncandor. "You know there"s nothing the matter with me, father. You know what the trouble is." He was silent. He could not face the trouble. "I"ve heard people talk of a heartache," she went on. "I never believed there was really such a thing.
But I know there is, now. There"s a pain here." She pressed her hand against her breast. "It"s sore with aching. What shall I do? I shall have to live through it somehow."
"If you don"t feel exactly well," said her father "I guess you better see the doctor."
"What shall I tell him is the matter with me? That I want Bartley Hubbard?"
He winced at the words, but she did not. "He knows that already. Everybody in town does. It"s never been any secret. I couldn"t hide it, from the first day I saw him. I"d just as lief as not they should say I was dying for him. I shall not care what they say when I"m dead."
"You"d oughtn"t,--you"d oughtn"t to talk that way, Marcia," said her father, gently.
"What difference?" she demanded, scornfully. There was truly no difference, so far as concerned any creed of his, and he was too honest to make further pretence. "What shall I do?" she went on again. "I"ve thought of praying; but what would be the use?"
"I"ve never denied that there was a G.o.d, Marcia," said her father.
"Oh, I know. _That_ kind of G.o.d! Well, well! I know that I talk like a crazy person! Do you suppose it was providential, my being with you in the office that morning when Bartley came in?"
"No," said her father, "I don"t. I think it was an accident."
"Mother said it was providential, my finding him out before it was too late."
"I think it was a good thing. The fellow has the making of a first-cla.s.s scoundrel in him."
"Do you think he"s a scoundrel now?" she asked quietly.
"He hasn"t had any great opportunity yet," said the old man, conscientiously sparing him.