William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean HowellsЧитать онлайн книгу.
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 course, 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