William Dean Howells: 27 Novels in One Volume (Illustrated). William Dean Howells
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next morning they heard the Squire moving about in his room, and he was late in coming down to breakfast, at which he was ordinarily so prompt. "He's packing," said Marcia, sadly. "It's dreadful to be willing to have him go!"
Bartley went out and met him at his door, bag in hand. "Hollo!" he cried, and made a decent show of surprise and regret.
"M-yes!" said the old man, as they went down stairs. "I've made out a visit. But I'm an old fellow, and I ain't easy away from home. I shall tell Mis' Gaylord how you're gettin' along, and she'll be pleased to hear it. Yes, she'll be pleased to hear it. I guess I shall get off on the ten-o'clock train."
The conversation between Bartley and his father-in-law was perfunctory. Men who have dealt so plainly with each other do not assume the conventional urbanities in their intercourse without effort. They had both been growing more impatient of the restraint; they could not have kept it up much longer.
"Well, I suppose it's natural you should want to be home again, but I can't understand how any one can want to go back to Equity when he has the privilege of staying in Boston."
"Boston will do for a young man," said the Squire, "but I'm too old for it. The city cramps me; it's too tight a fit; and yet I can't seem to find myself in it."
He suffered from the loss of identity which is a common affliction with country people coming to town. The feeling that they are of no special interest to any of the thousands they meet bewilders and harasses them; after the searching neighborhood of village life, the fact that nobody would meddle in their most intimate affairs if they could, is a vague distress. The Squire not only experienced this, but, after reigning so long as the censor of morals and religion in Equity, it was a deprivation for him to pass a whole week without saying a bitter thing to any one. He was tired of the civilities that smoothed him down on every side.
"Well, if you must go," said Bartley, "I'll order a hack."
"I guess I can walk to the depot," returned the old man.
"Oh, no, you can't." Bartley drove to the station with him, and they bade each other adieu with a hand-shake. They were no longer enemies, but they liked each other less than ever.
"See you in Equity next summer, I suppose?" suggested the Squire.
"So Marcia says," replied Bartley. "Well, take care of yourself.—You confounded, tight-fisted old woodchuck!" he added under his breath, for the Squire had allowed him to pay the hack fare.
He walked home, composing variations on his parting malison, to find that the Squire had profited by his brief absence while ordering the hack, to leave with Marcia a silver cup, knife, fork, and spoon, which Olive Halleck had helped him choose, for the baby. In the cup was a check for five hundred dollars. The Squire was embarrassed in presenting the gifts, and when Marcia turned upon him with, "Now, look here, father, what do you mean?" he was at a loss how to explain.
"Well, it's what I always meant to do for you."
"Baby's things are all right," said Marcia. "But I'm not going to let Bartley take any money from you, unless you think as well of him as I do, and say so, right out."
The Squire laughed. "You couldn't quite expect me to do that, could you?"
"No, of course not. But what I mean is, do you think now that I did right to marry him?"
"Oh, you're all right, Marcia. I'm glad you're getting along so well."
"No, no! Is Bartley all right?"
The Squire laughed again, and rubbed his chin in enjoyment of her persistence. "You can't expect me to own up to everything all at once."
"So you see, Bartley," said Marcia, in repeating these words to him, "it was quite a concession."
"Well, I don't know about the concession, but I guess there's no doubt about the check," replied Bartley.
"Oh, don't say that, dear!" protested his wife. "I think father was pleased with his visit every way. I know he's been anxious about me, all the time; and yet it was a good deal for him to do, after what he had said, to come down here and as much as take it all back. Can't you look at it from his side?"
"Oh, I dare say it was a dose," Bartley admitted. The money had set several things in a better light. "If all the people that have abused me would take it back as handsomely as your father has,"—he held the check up,—"why, I wish there were twice as many of them."
She laughed for pleasure in his joke. "I think father was impressed by everything about us,—beginning with baby," she said, proudly.
"Well, he kept his impressions to himself."
"Oh, that's nothing but his way. He never was demonstrative,—like me."
"No, he has his emotions under control,—not to say under lock and key,—not to add, in irons."
Bartley went on to give some instances of the Squire's fortitude when apparently tempted to express pleasure or interest in his Boston experiences.
They both undeniably felt freer now that he was gone. Bartley stayed longer than he ought from his work, in tacit celebration of the Squire's departure, and they were very merry together; but when he left her, Marcia called for her baby, and, gathering it close to her heart, sighed over it, "Poor father! poor father!"
XXIII
When the spring opened, Bartley pushed Flavia about the sunny pavements in a baby carriage, while Marcia paced alongside, looking in under the calash top from time to time, arranging the bright afghan, and twitching the little one's lace hood into place. They never noticed that other perambulators were pushed by Irish nurse-girls or French bonnes; they had paid somewhat more than they ought for theirs, and they were proud of it merely as a piece of property. It was rather Bartley's ideal, as it is that of most young American fathers, to go out with his wife and baby in that way; he liked to have his friends see him; and he went out every afternoon he could spare. When he could not go, Marcia went alone. Mrs. Halleck had given her a key to the garden, and on pleasant mornings she always found some of the family there, when she pushed the perambulator up the path, to let the baby sleep in the warmth and silence of the sheltered place. She chatted with Olive or the elder sisters, while Mrs. Halleck drove Cyrus on to the work of tying up the vines and trimming the shrubs, with the pitiless rigor of women when they get a man about some outdoor labor. Sometimes, Ben Halleck was briefly of the party; and one morning when Marcia opened the gate, she found him there alone with Cyrus, who was busy at some belated tasks of horticulture. The young man turned at the unlocking of the gate, and saw Marcia lifting the front wheels of the perambulator to get it over the steps of the pavement outside. He limped hastily down the walk to help her, but she had the carriage in the path before he could reach, her, and he had nothing to do but to walk back at its side, as she propelled it towards the house. "You see what a useless creature a cripple is," he said.
Marcia did not seem to have heard him. "Is your mother at home?" she asked.
"I think she is," said Halleck. "Cyrus, go in and tell mother that Mrs. Hubbard is here, won't you?"
Cyrus went, after a moment of self-respectful delay, and Marcia sat down on a bench under a pear-tree beside the walk. Its narrow young leaves and blossoms sprinkled her with shade shot with vivid sunshine, and in her light dress she looked like a bright, fresh figure from some painter's study of spring. She breathed quickly from her exertion, and her cheeks had a rich, dewy bloom. She had pulled the perambulator round so that she might see her baby while she waited, and she looked at the baby now, and not at Halleck, as she said, "It is quite hot in the sun to-day." She had a way of closing her lips, after speaking, in that sweet smile of hers, and then of glancing sidelong at the person to whom she spoke.
"I suppose it is," said Halleck, who remained on foot. "But I haven't been out yet. I gave myself a day off from the Law School, and I hadn't quite decided what to do