He Fell In Love With His Wife, Edward Payson Roe [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

away and going to his room.

 

She was puzzled again. “I’m sure I don’t dote on self-sacrifice and hard duty

any more than he does, but I can’t tell him that duty is not hard when it’s to

him.”

 

Jane was given the room over the kitchen which Mrs. Wiggins had occupied, and

the farmhouse soon adopted her into its quiet routine. Holcroft’s course

continued to cause Alida a dissatisfaction which she could scarcely define.

He was as kind as ever he had been and even more considerate; he not only

gratified her wishes, but tried to anticipate them, while Jane’s complete

subserviency proved that she had been spoken to very plainly.

 

One day she missed her spelling lesson for the third time, and Alida told her

that she must learn it thoroughly before going out. The child took the book

reluctantly, yet without a word. “That’s a good girl!” said Alida, wishing to

encourage her. “I was afraid at first you wouldn’t mind me so readily.”

 

“He told me to. He’d fire me out the window if I didn’t mind you.”

 

“Oh, no! I think he’s very kind to you.”

 

“Well, he’s kind to you, too.”

 

“Yes, he has always been kind to me,” said Alida gently and lingeringly, as if

the thought were pleasant to dwell upon.

 

“Say,” said Jane, yielding to her curiosity, “how did you make him so afraid

of you when he don’t like you? He didn’t like mother, but he wasn’t afraid of

her.”

 

“Why do you think he doesn’t like me?” Alida faltered, turning very pale.

 

“Oh! ‘Cause he looked once jest as he did after mother’d been goin’ for—”

 

“There, be still! You mustn’t speak of such things, or talk to me about Mr.

Holcroft in such a way,” and she hastily left the kitchen. When in the

solitude of her own room, she gave way to bitter tears. “Is it so plain,” she

thought, “that even this ignorant child sees it? And the unhappy change began

the day she came, too. I can’t understand it. We were so happy before; and

he seemed to enjoy being near me and talking to me when his work permitted.

He used to look into my eyes in a way that made me hope and, indeed, feel

almost sure. I receive no more such looks; he seems only trying to do his

duty by me as he promised at first, and acts as if it were all duty, a mere

matter of conscience. Could he have discovered how I felt, and so is taking

this way to remind me that nothing of the kind was in our agreement? Well,

I’ve no reason to complain; I accepted the relation of my own free will, but

it’s hard, hard indeed for a woman who loves a man with her whole heart and

soul—and he her husband—to go on meeting him day after day, yet act as if

she were his mere business partner. But I can’t help myself; my very nature,

as well as a sense of his rights, prevents me from asking more or even showing

that I wish for more. That WOULD be asking for it. But can it be true that

he is positively learning to dislike me? To shrink from me with that strong

repulsion which women feel toward some men? Oh! If that is true, the case is

hopeless; it would kill me. Every effort to win him, even the most delicate

and unobtrusive, would only drive him farther away; the deepest instincts of

his soul would lead him to withdraw—to shun me. If this is true, the time

may come when, so far from my filling his house with comfort, I shall make him

dread to enter it. Oh, oh! My only course is to remember just what I

promised and he expected when he married me, and live up to that.”

 

Thus husband and wife reached the same, conclusion and were rendered equally

unhappy.

 

Chapter XXX. Holcroft’s Best Hope

 

When Holcroft came in to dinner that day the view he had adopted was

confirmed, yet Alida’s manner and appearance began to trouble him. Even to

his rather slow perception, she did not seem so happy as she had been. She

did not meet his eye with her old frank, friendly, and as he had almost hoped,

affectionate, expression; she seemed merely feverishly anxious to do

everything and have all as he wished. Instead of acting with natural ease and

saying what was in her mind without premeditation, a conscious effort was

visible and an apparent solicitude that he should be satisfied. The

inevitable result was that he was more dissatisfied. “She’s doing her best for

me,” he growled, as he went back to his work, “and it begins to look as if it

might wear her out in time. Confound it! Having everything just so isn’t of

much account when a man’s heart-hungry. I’d rather have had one of her old

smiles and gone without my dinner. Well, well; how little a man understands

himself or knows the future! The day I married her I was in mortal dread lest

she should care for me too much and want to be affectionate and all that; and

here I am, discontented and moping because everything has turned out as I then

wished. Don’t see as I’m to blame, either. She had no business to grow so

pretty. Then she looked like a ghost, but now when the color comes into her

cheeks, and her blue eyes sparkle, a man would be a stupid clod if he didn’t

look with all his eyes and feel his heart a-thumping. That she should change

so wasn’t in the bargain; neither was it that she should read aloud in such

sweet tones that a fellow’d like to listen to the dictionary; nor that she

should make the house and yard look as they never did before, and, strangest

of all, open my eyes to the fact that apple trees bear flowers as well as

pippins. I can’t even go by a wild posy in the lane without thinking she’d

like it and see in it a sight more than I once could. I’ve been taken in, as

old Jonathan feared,” he muttered, following out his fancy with a sort of grim

humor. “She isn’t the woman I thought I was marrying at all, and I aint bound

by my agreement—not in my thoughts, anyhow. I’d have been in a nice scrape

if I’d taken my little affidavit not to think of her or look upon her in any

other light than that of housekeeper and butter maker. It’s a scary thing,

this getting married with a single eye to business. See where I am now!

Hanged if I don’t believe I’m in love with my wife, and, like a thundering

fool, I had to warn her against falling in love with me! Little need of that,

though. She hasn’t been taken in, for I’m the same old chap she married, and

I’d be a mighty mean cuss if I went to her and said, ‘Here, I want you to do

twice as much, a hundred-fold as much as you agreed to.’ I’d be a fool, too,

for she couldn’t do it unless something drew her toward me just as I’m drawn

toward her.”

 

Late in the afternoon he leaned on the handle of his corn plow, and, in the

consciousness of solitude, said aloud: “Things grow clear if you think of them

enough, and the Lord knows I don’t think of much else any more. It isn’t her

good qualities which I say over to myself a hundred times a day, or her

education, or anything of the kind, that draws me; it’s she herself. I like

her. Why don’t I say love her, and be honest? Well, it’s a fact, and I’ve

got to face it. Here I am, plowing out my corn, and it looks splendid for its

age. I thought if I could stay on the old place, and plant and cultivate and

reap, I’d be more than content, and now I don’t seem to care a rap for the

corn or the farm either, compared with Alida; and I care for her just because

she is Alida and no one else. But the other side of this fact has an ugly

look. Suppose I’m disagreeable to her! When she married me she felt like a

woman drowning; she was ready to take hold of the first hand reached to her

without knowing much about whose hand it was. Well, she’s had time to find

out. She isn’t drawn. Perhaps she feels toward me somewhat as I did toward

Mrs. Mumpson, and she can’t help herself either. Well, well, the bare thought

of it makes my heart lead. What’s a man to do? What can I do but live up to

my agreement and not torment her any more than I can help with my company?

That’s the only honest course. Perhaps she’ll get more used to me in time.

She might get sick, and then I’d be so kind and watchful that she’d think the

old fellow wasn’t so bad, after all, But I shan’t give her the comfort of no

end of self-sacrifice in trying to be pleasant and sociable. If she’s foolish

enough to think she’s in my debt she can’t pay it in that way. No, sir! I’ve

got to make the most of it now—I’m bound to—but this business marriage will

never suit me until the white arm I saw in the dairy room is around my neck,

and she looks in my eyes and says, ‘James, I guess I’m ready for a longer

marriage ceremony.’”

 

It was a pity that Alida could not have been among the hazelnut bushes near

and heard him.

 

He resumed his toil, working late and doggedly. At supper he was very

attentive to Alida, but taciturn and preoccupied; and when the meal was over

he lighted his pipe and strolled out into the moonlight. She longed to follow

him, yet felt it to be more impossible than if she were chained to the floor.

 

And so the days passed; Holcroft striving with the whole force of his will to

appear absorbed in the farm, and she, with equal effort, to seem occupied and

contented with her household and dairy duties. They did everything for each

other that they could, and yet each thought that the other was acting from a

sense of obligation, and so all the more sedulously veiled their actual

thoughts and feelings from each other. Or course, such mistaken effort only

led to a more complete misunderstanding.

 

With people of their simplicity and habit of reticence, little of what was in

their hearts appeared on the surface. Neither had time to mope, and their

mutual duties were in a large measure a support and refuge. Of these they

could still speak freely for they pertained to business. Alida’s devotion to

her work was unfeigned for it seemed now her only avenue of approach to her

husband. She watched over the many broods of little chickens with tireless

vigilance. If it were yellow gold, she could not have gathered the butter

from the churn with greater greed. She kept the house immaculate and sought

to develop her cooking into a fine art. She was scrupulous in giving Jane her

lessons and trying to correct her vernacular and manners, but the presence of

the child grew to be a heavier cross every day. She could not blame the girl,

whose misfortune it was to lead incidentally to the change in Holcroft’s

manner, yet it was impossible not to associate her with the beginning of that

change. Jane was making decided improvement, and had Alida been happy and at

rest this fact