A Modern Instance. William Dean HowellsЧитать онлайн книгу.

      V.

      The house seemed too little for Marcia's happiness, and after dinner she did not let Bartley forget his last night's engagement. She sent him off to get his horse at the hotel, and ran up to her room to put on her wraps for the drive. Her mother cleared away the dinner things; she pushed the table to the side of the room, and then sat down in her feather-cushioned chair and waited her husband's pleasure to speak. He ordinarily rose from the Sunday dinner and went back to his office; to-day he had taken a chair before the stove. But he had mechanically put his hat on, and he wore it pushed off his forehead as he tilted his chair back on its hind legs, and braced himself against the hearth of the stove with his feet.

      A man is master in his own house generally through the exercise of a certain degree of brutality, but Squire Gaylord maintained his predominance by an enlightened absenteeism. No man living always at home was ever so little under his own roof. While he was in more active business life, he had kept an office in the heart of the village, where he spent all his days, and a great part of every night; but after he had become rich enough to risk whatever loss of business the change might involve, he bought this large old square house on the border of the village, and thenceforth made his home in the little detached office.

      If Mrs. Gaylord had dimly imagined that she should see something more of him, having him so near at hand, she really saw less: there was no weather, by day or night, in which he could not go to his office, now. He went no more than his wife into the village society; she might have been glad now and then of a little glimpse of the world, but she never said so, and her social life had ceased, like her religious life. Their house was richly furnished according to the local taste of the time; the parlor had a Brussels carpet, and heavy chairs of mahogany and hair-cloth; Marcia had a piano there, and since she had come home from school they had made company, as Mrs. Gaylord called it, two or three times for her; but they had held aloof from the festivity, the Squire in his office, and Mrs. Gaylord in the family room where they now sat in unwonted companionship.

      “Well, Mr. Gaylord,” said his wife, “I don't know as you can say but what Marcia's suited well enough.”

      This was the first allusion they had made to the subject, but she let it take the argumentative form of her cogitations.

      “M-yes,” sighed the Squire, in long, nasal assent, “most too well, if anything.” He rasped first one unshaven cheek and then the other, with his thin, quivering hand.

      “He's smart enough,” said Mrs. Gaylord, as before.

      “M-yes, most too smart,” replied her husband, a little more quickly than before. “He's smart enough, even if she wasn't, to see from the start that she was crazy to have him, and that isn't the best way to begin life for a married couple, if I'm a judge.”

      “It would killed her if she hadn't got him. I could see 't was wearin' on her every day, more and more. She used to fairly jump, every knock she'd hear at the door; and I know sometimes, when she was afraid he wa' n't coming, she used to go out, in hopes 't she sh'd meet him: I don't suppose she allowed to herself that she did it for that—Marcia's proud.”

      “M-yes,” said the Squire, “she's proud. And when a proud girl makes a fool of herself about a fellow, it's a matter of life and death with her. She can't help herself. She lets go everything.”

      “I declare,” Mrs. Gaylord went on, “it worked me up considerable to have her come in some those times, and see by her face 't she'd seen him with some the other girls. She used to look so! And then I'd hear her up in her room, cryin' and cryin'. I shouldn't cared so much, if Marcia'd been like any other girl, kind of flirty, like, about it. But she wa' n't. She was just bowed down before her idol.”

      A final assent came from the Squire, as if wrung out of his heart, and he rose from his chair, and then sat down again. Marcia was his child, and he loved her with his whole soul. “M-well!” he deeply sighed, “all that part's over, anyway,” but he tingled in an anguish of sympathy with what she had suffered. “You see, Miranda, how she looked at me when she first came in with him,—so proud and independent, poor girl! and yet as if she was afraid I mightn't like it?”

      “Yes, I see it.”

      He pulled his hat far down over his cavernous eyes, and worked his thin, rusty old jaws.

      “I hope 't she'll be able to school herself, so 's t' not show out her feelings so much,” said Mrs. Gaylord.

      “I wish she could school herself so as to not have 'em so much; but I guess she'll have 'em, and I guess she'll show 'em out.” They were both silent; after a while he added, throwing at the stove a minute fragment of the cane he had pulled off the seat of his chair: “Miranda, I've expected something of this sort a good while, and I've thought over what Bartley had better do.”

      Mrs. Gaylord stooped forward and picked up the bit of wood which her husband had thrown down; her vigilance was rewarded by finding a thread on the oil-cloth near where it lay; she whipped this round her finger, and her husband continued: “He'd better give up his paper and go into the law. He 's done well in the paper, and he's a smart writer; but editing a newspaper aint any work for a man. It's all well enough as long as he's single, but when he's got a wife to look after, he'd better get down to work. My business is in just such a shape now that I could hand it over to him in a lump; but come to wait a year or two longer, and this young man and that one 'll eat into it, and it won't be the same thing at all. I shall want Bartley to push right along, and get admitted at once. He can do it, fast enough. He's bright enough,” added the old man, with a certain grimness. “M-well!” he broke out, with a quick sigh, after a moment of musing; “it hasn't happened at any very bad time. I was just thinking, this morning, that I should like to have my whole time, pretty soon, to look after my property. I sha'n't want Bartley to do that for me. I'll give him a good start in money and in business; but I'll look after my property myself. I'll speak to him, the first chance I get.”

      A light step sounded on the stairs, and Marcia burst into the room, ready for her drive. “I wanted to get a good warm before I started,” she explained, stooping before the stove, and supporting herself with one hand on her father's knee. There had been no formal congratulations upon her engagement from either of her parents; but this was not requisite, and would have been a little affected; they were perhaps now ashamed to mention it outright before her alone. The Squire, however, went so far as to put his hand over the hand she had laid upon his knee, and to smooth it twice or thrice.

      “You going to ride after that sorrel colt of Bartley's?” he asked.

      “Of course!” she answered, with playful pertness. “I guess Bartley can manage the sorrel colt! He's never had any trouble yet.”

      “He's always been able to give his whole mind to him before,” said the Squire. He gave Marcia's hand a significant squeeze, and let it go.

      She would not confess her consciousness of his meaning at once. She looked up at the clock, and then turned and pulled her father's watch out of his waistcoat pocket, and compared the time. “Why, you're both fast!”

      “Perhaps Bartley's