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

interpret them. “She’s losin’ her

hold on ‘im,” she thought, “He acted just as if she was mother.”

 

When Jane saw Alida coming toward the house she whisked from the concealing

shrubbery to the kitchen again and was stolidly washing the dishes when her

mistress entered. “You are slow tonight,” said Alida, looking at the child

keenly, but the impassive face revealed nothing. She set about helping the

girl, feeling it would be a relief to keep her hands busy.

 

Jane’s efforts to comfort were always maladroit, yet the apparent situation so

interested her that she yielded to her inclination to talk. “Say,” she began,

and Alida was too dejected and weary to correct the child’s vernacular, “Mr.

Holcroft’s got somethin’ on his mind.”

 

“Well, that’s not strange.”

 

“No, s’pose not. Hate to see ‘im look so, though. He always used to look so

when mother went for ‘im and hung around ‘im. At last he cleared mother out,

and just before he looked as black as he did when he passed the house while

ago. You’re good to me, an’ I’d like you to stay. ‘Fi’s you I’d leave ‘im

alone.”

 

“Jane,” said Alida coldly, “I don’t wish you ever to speak to me of such

things again,” and she hastily left the room.

 

“Oh, well!” muttered Jane, “I’ve got eyes in my head. If you’re goin’ to be

foolish, like mother, and keep a-goin’ for ‘im, it’s your lookout. I kin get

along with him and he with me, and I’M goin’ to stay.”

 

Holcroft strode rapidly up the lane to the deep solitude at the edge of his

woodland. Beneath him lay the farm and the home that he had married to keep,

yet now, without a second’s hesitation, he would part with all to call his

wife WIFE. How little the name now satisfied him, without the sweet realities

of which the word is significant! The term and relation had become a mocking

mirage. He almost cursed himself that he had exulted over his increasing bank

account and general prosperity, and had complacently assured himself that she

was doing just what he had asked, without any sentimental nonsense. “How could

I expect it to turn out otherwise?” he thought. “From the first I made her

think I hadn’t a soul for anything but crops and money. Now that she’s

getting over her trouble and away from it, she’s more able to see just what I

am, or at least what she naturally thinks I am. But she doesn’t understand

me—I scarcely understand myself. I long to be a different man in every way,

and not to work and live like an ox. Here are some of my crops almost ready

to gather and they never were better, yet I’ve no heart for the work. Seems

to me it’ll wear me out if I have to carry this load of trouble all the time.

I thought my old burdens hard to bear; I thought I was lonely before, but it

was nothing compared with living near one you love, but from whom you are cut

off by something you can’t see, yet must feel to the bottom of your heart.”

 

His distraught eyes rested on the church spire, fading in the twilight, and

the little adjoining graveyard. “Oh, Bessie,” he groaned, “why did you die? I

was good enough for YOU. Oh! That all had gone on as it was and I had never

known—”

 

He stopped, shook his head, and was silent. At last he signed, “I DID love

Bessie. I love and respect her memory as much as ever. But somehow I never

felt as I do now. All was quiet and matter-of-fact in those days, yet it was

real and satisfying. I was content to live on, one day like another, to the

end of my days. If I hadn’t been so content it would be better for me now.

 

I’d have a better chance if I had read more, thought more, and fitted myself

to be more of a companion for a woman like Alida. If I knew a great deal and

could talk well, she might forget I’m old and homely. Bessie was so true a

friend that she would wish, if she knows, what I wish. I thought I needed a

housekeeper; I find I need more than all else such a wife as Alida could

be—one that could help me to be a man instead of a drudge, a Christian

instead of a discontented and uneasy unbeliever. At one time, it seemed that

she was leading me along so naturally and pleasantly that I never was so

happy; then all at once it came to me that she was doing it from gratitude and

a sense of duty, and the duty grows harder for her every day. Well, there

seems nothing for it now but to go on as we began and hope that the future

will bring us more in sympathy.”

 

Chapter XXXI. “Never!”

 

For the next two or three days Jane had no occasion to observe that Alida was

in the least degree obtrusive in her attention to the farmer. She was

assiduous in her work and more diligent than ever in her conscious efforts to

do what she thought he wished; but she was growing pale, constrained, and

silent. She struggled heroically to appear as at first, but without much

success, for she could not rally from the wound he had given her so

unintentionally and which Jane’s words had deepened. She almost loathed

herself under her association with Mrs. Mumpson, and her morbid thoughts had

hit upon a worse reason for Holcroft’s apparent repulsion. As she questioned

everything in the sleepless hours that followed the interview in the garden,

she came to the miserable conclusion that he had discovered her love, and that

by suggestion, natural to his mind, it reminded him of her pitiful story. He

could be sorry for her and be kind; he could even be her honest friend and

protector as a wronged and unhappy woman, but he could not love one with a

history like hers and did not wish her to love him. This seemed an adequate

explanation of the change in their relations, but she felt that it was one

under which her life would wither and her heart break.

 

This promised to be worse than what she had dreaded at the almshouse—the

facing the world alone and working till she died among strangers. The fact

that they were strangers would enable her to see their averted faces with

comparative indifference, but that the man to whom she had yielded her whole

heart should turn away was intolerable. She felt that he could not do this

willingly but only under the imperious instincts of his nature—that he was

virtually helpless in the matter. There was an element in these thoughts

which stung her woman’s soul, and, as we have said, she could not rally.

 

Holcroft never suspected her morbid thoughts, and his loyal, loving heart was

incapable of dreaming of them. He only grew more unhappy as he saw the

changes in her, for he regarded himself as the cause. Yet he was perplexed

and unable to account for her rapidly increasing pallor while he continued so

kind, considerate, and especially so unobtrusive. He assuredly thought he was

showing a disposition to give her all the time she wished to become reconciled

to her lot. “Thunder!” he said to himself, “we can’t grow old together without

getting used to each other.”

 

On Saturday noon, at dinner, he remarked, “I shall have to begin haying on

Monday and so I’ll take everything to town this afternoon, for I won’t be able

to go again for some days. Is there anything you’d like me to get, Mrs.

Holcroft?”

 

She shook her head. “I don’t need anything,” she replied. He looked at her

downcast face with troubled eyes and shivered. “She looks as if she were going

to be sick,” he thought. “Good Lord! I feel as if there was nothing but

trouble ahead. Every mouthful I take seems to choke me.”

 

A little later he pushed away almost untasted a piece of delicious cherry pie,

the first of the season. Alida could scarcely keep the tears back as she

thought, “There was a time when he would have praised it without stint. I

took so much pains with it in the hope he’d notice, for he once said he was

very fond of it.” Such were the straws that were indicating the deep, dark

currents.

 

As he rose, she said almost apathetically in her dejection, “Mr. Holcroft,

Jane and I picked a basket of the early cherries. You may as well sell them,

for there are plenty left on the tree for us.”

 

“That was too much for you to do in the hot sun. Well, I’ll sell ‘em and add

what they bring to your egg money in the bank. You’ll get rich,” he

continued, trying to smile, “if you don’t spend more.”

 

“I don’t wish to spend anything,” she said, turning away with the thought,

“How can he think I want finery when my heart is breaking?”

 

Holcroft drove away, looking and feeling as if he were going to a funeral. At

last he broke out, “I can’t stand this another day. Tomorrow’s Sunday, and

I’ll manage to send Jane somewhere or take Alida out to walk and tell her the

whole truth. She shall be made to see that I can’t help myself and that I’m

willing to do anything she wishes. She’s married to me and has got to make

the best of it, and I’m sure I’m willing to make it as easy as I can.”

 

Jane was a little perplexed at the condition of affairs. Mrs. Holcroft had

left her husband alone as far as possible, as she had advised, but apparently

it had not helped matters much. But she believed that the trouble she had

witnessed bode her no ill and so was inclined to regard it philosophically.

“He looks almost as glum, when he’s goin’ round alone, as if he’d married

mother. She talked too much, and that didn’t please him; this one talks less

and less, and he don’t seem pleased, nuther, but it seems to me he’s very

foolish to be so fault-findin’ when she does everything for him top-notch. I

never lived so well in my life, nor he, nuther, I believe. He must be in a

bad way when he couldn’t eat that cherry pie.”

 

Alida was so weary and felt so ill that she went to the parlor and lay down

upon the lounge. “My heart feels as if it were bleeding slowly away,” she

murmured. “If I’m going to be sick the best thing I can do is to die and end

it all,” and she gave way to that deep dejection in which there seems no

remedy for trouble.

 

The hours dragged slowly by; Jane finished her household tasks very leisurely,

then taking a basket, went out to the garden to pick some early peas. While

thus engaged, she saw a man coming up the lane. His manner instantly riveted

her attention and awakened her curiosity, and she crouched lower behind the

pea vines for concealment. All her furtive, watchful instincts were awake,

and her conscience was clear, too, for certainly she had a right to spy upon a

stranger.

 

The man seemed almost as furtive as herself; his eyes were everywhere and his

step slow and hesitating. Instead of going directly to the house he

cautiously entered the barn, and she heard him a little later call Mr.

Holcroft. Of course there was no answer, and as if reassured, he approached

the house, looking here and there on every side,