"Yes."
The wife came downstairs.
"Well, then, we can have dinner. I don"t know that it"s ready, though; Bridget has had a toothache all day, and she"s just good-for-nothing."
All this in the same faded tone of voice.
The husband pa.s.sed into the parlor, and began to read the paper.
The weary tongue of his feminine partner wagged on, in a dreary sort of way.
"I think these girls are so foolish; they haven"t a bit of pluck. I"ve been trying to persuade her to go to the dentist"s and have her teeth out, but she won"t. I"m just tired to death to-night, and there"s no end to the work; Bridget has been moaning around all day-why her teeth--"
"Oh, bother her teeth!"
"Why, don"t you care to hear anything that goes on at home, George?"
"I don"t care to hear about teeth that go on at home; Bridget"s teeth especially. I don"t care a rap for the whole set."
"How cross you are to-night, George! when I"m so tired, too. Johnnie, your face is dirty, go and wash it; be quick now, for it"s time for dinner. I don"t know that Bridget will ever call us. She"s probably sitting out in the kitchen, nursing her teeth; why she has five roots there, and all of them so inflamed that--"
"Bother her roots, I say!"
"George, you are extremely irascible, but that"s the way; I get no sympathy at all."
"Not when you want it by the wholesale for Bridget"s roots."
"Well, what should we talk about? I don"t see how we can ever have conversation in the home, if you won"t listen to anything."
And so they went on-the tired husband, moody and irritable, and the tired wife, loquacious about matters of no interest. I felt sorry for her who spake, and him who heard.
A husband worn out with the cares and worries of an unsatisfactory business day, and a wife harra.s.sed and fretted by overwork and petty annoyances, could succeed in talking pleasantly together only by the use of will-power and principle. It would require a big effort, but the effort would pay. It would be one of the best investments a married pair could make. The returns would be quick and large. I wonder more don"t deposit in this bank.
V
I had not forgotten Mr. Chance. This fact annoyed me excessively, since I saw that he had forgotten me. A forgotten man may remember a woman, and preserve his self-respect, if not his merriment; but when a forgotten woman remembers a man, that is quite another thing. Not that I was brooding over Mr. Chance-far from it; I thought very little of him, in one way, for I frequently saw him with Miss Sprig; but in spite of all that, I could not quite forget the impression he made upon me the day those boys killed the gay little squirrel, and again the day the poor mother went down into the deep, dark water with her child held close to her agonized heart. The feeling I experienced for him on that awful day, was unique in my history. I had never been an impressionable girl as far as men were concerned-I was not an impressionable woman. For me to carry the thought of a man home with me-for me to dwell upon this thought, and above all to take pleasure in dwelling upon it, meant more than it would have meant for some women. That was as far as the matter had gone, but it was far enough-too far, considering his evident indifference, and I was humiliated, for the first time in my life, over my att.i.tude toward a man. This mortification induced me to treat Mr.
Chance even more coldly than I should have done ordinarily, though his trifling with Miss Sprig would have called forth some coolness of conduct under any circ.u.mstances.
I had abundant opportunity to express myself in this way, for Mr.
Chance"s night work necessitated late rising, and I saw him to speak to him almost every morning. Indeed, I took some pains to be in my garden during the forenoon, and from this vantage ground I could not only see much that took place between himself and Miss Sprig, but I also had opportunity to speak with him as he pa.s.sed my house, on his way to the train.
Sometimes Miss Sprig walked to the station with him. He evidently absorbed much of her time and thought, and she evidently regarded him as her latest victim, for she made him a common subject of talk, and her entire acquaintance had the pleasure of hearing the foolish things he did and said. She always represented him as deeply in love with her; I have no doubt she really thought that he was.
For my own part, I cared very little whether he was in love, as it is called, or not. If he had succ.u.mbed to such a shallow-pated, bold, common girl, I felt contempt for him, and this contempt was deepened when I realized that he might be trifling with her. In any event it mortified and angered me to think he had been seen with me; (he had often called upon me and we had been out together several times), and that the old neighborhood gossips had coupled our names. Now it would be reported that Miss Sprig had cut me out; if I was pleasant toward him, they would wag their foolish old heads, and whisper about my efforts to win him back; if I was cool, they would shake these same empty pates, and prattle about my wounded affections. It was one of those cases where you can"t possibly do the right thing-I mean the thing that will silence the clacking tongue: consequently, as luck would have it, I plunged into the worst possible course I could have taken, for when Mrs. Catlin, who lived catacorner from me, and who watched me as a cat watches a mouse, said something one day about Mr. Chance"s feeling bound to pay attention to Mr. Purblind"s cousin, as long as she was visiting there, and that she knew such a girl wasn"t to his taste, and she was sure he would come to his senses soon, I was so angry that I lost control of my temper, and all control of my wits, and blazed out with:
"It"s none of my business or concern whom he pays attention to, and for my part I think they"re well mated."
Whereupon, realizing I had made a perfect fool of myself, and that this speech of mine would go the rounds of the suburb, and I could never erase it from the village mind-not if I lived a hundred sensible years, I had much ado to withhold myself from seizing a pot of bachelors"
b.u.t.tons that stood near, and breaking the whole thing over Mrs. Catlin"s idiotic skull.
It was on top of this pleasant interview with Mrs. Catlin, that Mr.
Chance came over, and asked me to attend a concert that evening with himself and Miss Sprig, and he very narrowly avoided receiving the bachelors" b.u.t.tons that Mrs. Catlin had but just escaped.
I strode indoors, and began packing some of my effects, for I was resolved to move that day, or the next. Not because I had discovered I had such fools for neighbors-I had always known that-but because I had just discovered that they had a fool for a neighbor.
Worldly considerations prevailed with me, and I took out the Penates that I had slammed into a trunk, mended their broken noses, and set them in place once more; but I hid myself away for several days, much as Moses was hidden, but for a less dignified reason.
After a time, I cooled off, and decided to accept the world as it stood, and not to rage because the millennium did not come before I was fitted to enjoy it.
Mrs. Purblind ran over one afternoon, and I could see that she was far from happy. I had noticed for some weeks various changes in the direction of improvement, in her care of her husband and household. I had also noticed that Mr. Purblind"s conduct did not keep pace with these improvements, but I fancied Mrs. Purblind was not sharp enough to see or sensitive enough to care. In this it seems I erred, as I have in one, or perhaps two, other directions during my life.
As Mrs. Purblind, for the first time since I have known her, didn"t seem to care to talk, I took up a book at random, and began reading aloud. As luck would have it, I stumbled into some pa.s.sages descriptive of the ideal home, and before I could stumble out again, the poor woman burst into tears. I suppose that tender little sentence served as the key that unlocked the floodgates. As soon as her grief had spent itself, she apologized, and ascribed her tears to bad news in a letter or something, and shortly afterward left. I watched her walking down the street, until my eyes were too dim to see her. It grieved me sorely that the cause of her sorrow was so deep, and so delicate that I could not offer her my sympathy. Her tears were piteous to me, and I wanted to take her to my heart, and tell her how sorry I was for her; but to do that would have been to take advantage of her moment of weakness, and that I could not-must not do. So I let her go from me with merely a few commonplace expressions of regret that she had received disturbing news, while all the time my heart was aching in unison with hers, and I kept her with me in thought, all day.
I went down to the lake directly after dinner; several things were troubling me, and I wanted to lay my puzzled head on Mother Nature"s bosom.
My run down the steep sides of the bluff set the blood to coursing smartly through my veins, and a new and more cheerful stream of thought to flowing.
I was tired that night, and it was a luxury to lie flat upon my back on the beach, listening to the rhythmical thud of the big, long wave at my feet, and the song of the stars overhead. There is something unspeakably tranquillizing in the studded dome of heaven; there is also something unspeakably sad. It bends over the struggling, yearning, aching human heart, as a mother, who has attained that peace which is the outgrowth of suffering, bends over the pa.s.sion, the sobbing, and the despair of her child.
"Hush, hush, it is all for the best."
"I cannot-will not bear it!"
"Hush, you know not what you say. G.o.d"s hand is in it all."
"There is no G.o.d in this, or if there is, He hates me!"
"Ah, my child, He loves you with unutterable love, and pities with unutterable pity. Yet a little while, and the day shall shine upon you; then you will know-a little while."
I turned from the great vault above me, and looked out upon the restive waters, and as I turned I saw a shadowy Mrs. Purblind sitting beside me on the beach, and questioning with sad eyes and heart, the stars that bent to listen.
"I have tried," she said; her face, usually so thoughtless, tear-stained, and quivering.
"Yes, I know you have tried," I answered; "I have seen that!"
"But he is just the same."
"Yes, and will be for a long time, and you will have to go on trying for years, if you want to carry him back to the old days," I said.
"That"s one of the hardest things in all the world!" she cried pa.s.sionately, "if we stop doing right-the right stops with us, but if we stop doing wrong and begin to do right, the wrong goes on."
"Not for always," I said, looking up to the stars.
"Oh, for so long!"