He Fell In Love With His Wife - Edward Payson Roe (the speed reading book .txt) 📗

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HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE

 

by Edward P. Roe

 

CONTENTS

Chapter I Left Alone

II A Very Interested Friend

III Mrs. Mumpson Negotiates and Yields

IV Domestic Bliss

V Mrs. Mumpson Takes up Her Burdens

VI A Marriage?

VII From Home to the Street

VIII Holcroft’s View of Matrimony

IX Mrs. Mumpson Accepts Her Mission

X A Night of Terror

XI Baffled

XII Jane

XIII Not Wife, But Waif

XIV A Pitched Battle

XV “What is to Become of Me?”

XVI Mrs. Mumpson’s Vicissitudes

XVII A Momentous Decision

XVIII Holcroft Gives His Hand

XIX A Business Marriage

XX Uncle Jonathan’s Impression of the Bride

XXI At Home

XXII Getting Acquainted

XXIII Between the Past and Future

XXIV Given Her Own Way

XXV A Charivari

XXVI “You don’t Know”

XXVII Farm and Farmer Bewitched

XXVIII Another Waif

XXIX Husband and Wife in Trouble

XXX Holcroft’s Best Hope

XXXI “Never!”

XXXII Jane Plays Mouse to the Lion

XXXIII “Shrink From YOU?”

 

Chapter I. Left Alone

 

The dreary March evening is rapidly passing from murky gloom to obscurity.

Gusts of icy rain and sleet are sweeping full against a man who, though

driving, bows his head so low that he cannot see his horses. The patient

beasts, however, plod along the miry road, unerringly taking their course to

the distant stable door. The highway sometimes passes through a grove on the

edge of a forest, and the trees creak and groan as they writhe in the heavy

blasts. In occasional groups of pines there is sighing and moaning almost

human in suggestiveness of trouble. Never had Nature been in a more dismal

mood, never had she been more prodigal of every element of discomfort, and

never had the hero of my story been more cast down in heart and hope than on

this chaotic day which, even to his dull fancy, appeared closing in harmony

with his feelings and fortune. He is going home, yet the thought brings no

assurance of welcome and comfort. As he cowers upon the seat of his market

wagon, he is to the reader what he is in the fading light—a mere dim outline

of a man. His progress is so slow that there will be plenty of time to relate

some facts about him which will make the scenes and events to follow more

intelligible.

 

James Holcroft is a middle-aged man and the owner of a small, hilly farm. He

had inherited his rugged acres from his father, had always lived upon them,

and the feeling had grown strong with the lapse of time that he could live

nowhere else. Yet he knew that he was, in the vernacular of the region,

“going downhill.” The small savings of years were slowly melting away, and

the depressing feature of this truth was that he did not see how he could help

himself. He was not a sanguine man, but rather one endowed with a hard,

practical sense which made it clear that the downhill process had only to

continue sufficiently long to leave him landless and penniless. It was all so

distinct on this dismal evening that he groaned aloud.

 

“If it comes to that, I don’t know what I’ll do—crawl away on a night like

this and give up, like enough.”

 

Perhaps he was right. When a man with a nature like his “gives up,” the end

has come. The low, sturdy oaks that grew so abundantly along the road were

types of his character—they could break, but not bend. He had little

suppleness, little power to adapt himself to varied conditions of life. An

event had occurred a year since, which for months, he could only contemplate

with dull wonder and dismay. In his youth he had married the daughter of a

small farmer. Like himself, she had always been accustomed to toil and frugal

living. From childhood she had been impressed with the thought that parting

with a dollar was a serious matter, and to save a dollar one of the good deeds

rewarded in this life and the life to come. She and her husband were in

complete harmony on this vital point. Yet not a miserly trait entered into

their humble thrift. It was a necessity entailed by their meager resources;

it was inspired by the wish for an honest independence in their old age.

 

There was to be no old age for her. She took a heavy cold, and almost before

her husband was aware of her danger, she had left his side. He was more than

grief-stricken, he was appalled. No children had blessed their union, and

they had become more and more to each other in their simple home life. To

many it would have seemed a narrow and even a sordid life. It could not have

been the latter, for all their hard work, their petty economies and plans to

increase the hoard in the savings bank were robbed of sordidness by an honest,

quiet affection for each other, by mutual sympathy and a common purpose. It

undoubtedly was a meager life, which grew narrower with time and habit. There

had never been much romance to begin with, but something that often wears

better—mutual respect and affection. From the first, James Holcroft had

entertained the sensible hope that she was just the girl to help him make a

living from his hillside farm, and he had not hoped for or even thought of

very much else except the harmony and good comradeship which bless people who

are suited to each other. He had been disappointed in no respect; they had

toiled and gathered like ants; they were confidential partners in the homely

business and details of the farm; nothing was wasted, not even time. The

little farmhouse abounded in comfort, and was a model of neatness and order.

If it and its surroundings were devoid of grace and ornament, they were not

missed, for neither of its occupants had ever been accustomed to such things.

The years which passed so uneventfully only cemented the union and increased

the sense of mutual dependence. They would have been regarded as exceedingly

matter-of-fact and undemonstrative, but they were kind to each other and

understood each other. Feeling that they were slowly yet surely getting

ahead, they looked forward to an old age of rest and a sufficiency for their

simple needs. Then, before he could realize the truth, he was left alone at

her wintry grave; neighbors dispersed after the brief service, and he plodded

back to his desolate home. There was no relative to step in and partially

make good his loss. Some of the nearest residents sent a few cooked

provisions until he could get help, but these attentions soon ceased. It was

believed that he was abundantly able to take care of himself, and he was left

to do so. He was not exactly unpopular, but had been much too reticent and

had lived too secluded a life to find uninvited sympathy now. He was the last

man, however, to ask for sympathy or help; and this was not due to

misanthropy, but simply to temperament and habits of life. He and his wife

had been sufficient for each other, and the outside world was excluded chiefly

because they had not time or taste for social interchanges. As a result, he

suffered serious disadvantages; he was misunderstood and virtually left to

meet his calamity alone.

 

But, indeed he could scarcely have met it in any other way. Even to his wife,

he had never formed the habit of speaking freely of his thoughts and feelings.

There had been no need, so complete was the understanding between them. A

hint, a sentence, reveled to each other their simple and limited processes of

thought. To talk about her now to strangers was impossible. He had no

language by which to express the heavy, paralyzing pain in his heart.

 

For a time he performed necessary duties in a dazed, mechanical way. The

horses and live stock were fed regularly, the cows milked; but the milk stood

in the dairy room until it spoiled. Then he would sit down at his desolate

hearth and gaze for hours into the fire, until it sunk down and died out.

Perhaps no class in the world suffers from such a terrible sense of loneliness

as simple-natured country people, to whom a very few have been all the company

they required.

 

At last Holcroft partially shook off his stupor, and began the experiment of

keeping house and maintaining his dairy with hired help. For a long year he

had struggled on through all kinds of domestic vicissitude, conscious all the

time that things were going from bad to worse. His house was isolated, the

region sparsely settled, and good help difficult to be obtained under favoring

auspices. The few respectable women in the neighborhood who occasionally

“lent a hand” in other homes than their own would not compromise themselves,

as they expressed it, by “keepin’ house for a widower.” Servants obtained

from the neighboring town either could not endure the loneliness, or else were

so wasteful and ignorant that the farmer, in sheer desperation, discharged

them. The silent, grief-stricken, rugged-featured man was no company for

anyone. The year was but a record of changes, waste, and small pilferings.

Although he knew he could not afford it, he tried the device of obtaining two

women instead of one, so that they might have society in each other; but

either they would not stay or else he found that he had two thieves to deal

with instead of one—brazen, incompetent creatures who knew more about whisky

than milk, and who made his home a terror to him.

 

Some asked good-naturedly, “Why don’t you marry again?” Not only was the very

thought repugnant, but he knew well that he was not the man to thrive on any

such errand to the neighboring farmhouses. Though apparently he had little

sentiment in his nature, yet the memory of his wife was like his religion. He

felt that he could not put an ordinary woman into his wife’s place, and say to

her the words he had spoken before. Such a marriage would be to him a

grotesque farce, at which his soul revolted.

 

At last he was driven to the necessity of applying for help to an Irish family

that had recently moved into the neighborhood. The promise was forbidding,

indeed, as he entered the squalid abode in which were huddled men, women, and

children. A sister of the mistress of the shanty was voluble in her

assurances of unlimited capability.

 

“Faix I kin do all the wourk, in doors and out, so I takes the notion,” she

had asserted.

 

There certainly was no lack of bone and muscle in the big, red-faced,

middle-aged woman who was so ready to preside at his hearth and glean from his

diminished dairy a modicum of profit; but as he trudged home along the wintry

road, he experienced strong feelings of disgust at the thought of such a

creature sitting by the kitchen fire in the place once occupied by his wife.

 

During all these domestic vicissitudes he had occupied the parlor, a stiff,

formal, frigid apartment, which had been rarely used in his married life. He

had no inclination for the society of his help; in fact, there had been none

with whom he could associate. The better class of those who went out to

service could find places much more to their taste than the lonely farmhouse.

The kitchen had been the one cozy, cheerful room