第11章

When Edward Blandford found himself alone after his wife had undertaken to fulfil his abandoned filial duty at her parents'

house, he felt a slight twinge of self-reproach.He could not deny that this was not the first time he had evaded the sterile Sabbath evenings at his mother-in-law's, or that even at other times he was not in accord with the cold and colorless sanctity of the family.

Yet he remembered that when he picked out from the budding womanhood of North Liberty this pure, scentless blossom, he had endured the privations of its surroundings with a sense of security in inhaling the atmosphere in which it grew, and knowing the integrity of its descent.There was a certain pleasure also in invading this seclusion with human passion; the first pressure of her hand when they were kneeling together at family prayers had the zest without the sin of a forbidden pleasure; the first kiss he had given her with their heads over the family Bible had fairly intoxicated him in the thin, rarefied air of their surroundings.In transplanting this blossom to his own home with the fond belief that it would eventually borrow the hues and color of his own passion, he had no further interest in the house he had left behind.When he found, however, that the ancestral influence was stronger than he expected, that the young wife, instead of assimilating to his conditions, had imported into their little household the rigors of her youthful home, he had been chilled and disappointed.But he could not help also remembering that his own boyhood had been spent in an atmosphere like her own in everything but its sincerity and deep conviction.His father had recognized the business value of placating the narrow tyranny of the respectable well-to-do religious community, and had become a conscious hypocrite and a popular citizen.He had himself been under that influence, and it was partly a conviction of this that had drawn him towards her as something genuine and real.It occurred to him now for the first time, as he looked around upon that compromise of their two lives in this chilly artificial home, that it was only natural that she would prefer the more truthful austerities of her mother's house.Had she detected the sham, and did she despise him for it?

These were questions which seemed to bring another self-accusing doubt in his own mind, although, without his being conscious of it, they had been really the outcome of that doubt.He could not help dwelling on the singular human interest she had taken in Demorest's love affair, and the utterly unexpected emotion she had shown.He had never seen her as charmingly illogical, capricious, and bewitchingly feminine.Had he not made a radical mistake in not giving her a frequent provocation for this innocent emotion--in fact, in not taking her out into a world of broader sympathies and experiences? What a household they might have had--if necessary in some other town--away from those cramped prejudices and limitations! What friends she might have been with Dick and his other worldly acquaintances; what social pleasures--guiltless amusements for her pure mind--in theatres, parties, and concerts!

Would she have objected to them?--had he ever seriously proposed them to her? No! if she had objected there would have been time enough to have made this present compromise; she would have at least respected and understood his sacrifice--and his friends.

Even the artificial externals of his household had never before so visibly impressed him.Now that she was no longer in the room it did not even bear a trace of her habitation, it certainly bore no suggestion of his own.Why had he bought that hideous horsehair furniture? To remind her of the old provincial heirlooms of her father's sitting-room.Did it remind her of it? The stiff and stony emptiness of this room had been fashioned upon the decorous respectability of his own father's parlor--in which his father, who usually spent his slippered leisure in the family sitting-room, never entered except on visits from the minister.It had chilled his own youthful soul--why had he perpetuated it here?

He could only answer these questions by moodily wandering about the house, and regretting he had not gone with her.After a vain attempt to establish social and domestic relations with the hot-air drum by putting his feet upon it--after an equally futile attempt to extract interest from the book of sermons by opening its pages at random--he glanced at the clock and suddenly resolved to go and fetch her.It would remind him of the old times when he used to accompany her from church, and, after her parents had retired, spend a blissful half-hour alone with her.With what a mingling of fear and childish curiosity she used to accept his equally timid caresses! Yes, he would go and fetch her; and he would recall it to her in a whisper while they were there.

Filled with this idea, when he changed his clothes again he put on a certain heavy beaver overcoat, on whose shaggy sleeve her little, hand had so often rested when he escorted her from meeting; and he even selected the gray muffler she had knit for him in the old ante-nuptial days.It was lying in the half-opened drawer from where she had not long before taken her disguising veil.

It was still blowing in sudden, capricious gusts; and when he opened the front door the wind charged fiercely upon him, as if to drive him back.When he had finally forced his way into the street, a return current closed the door as suddenly and sharply behind him as if it had ejected him from his home for ever.