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

off my hands.”

 

“To be serious,” she resumed, accompanying him to the barn for the first time,

“I think YOU are working too hard. I’m not. Our meals are so simple that it

doesn’t take me long to get them. I’m through with the hurry in my sewing,

the old dog does the churning, and you give me so much help in the dairy that

I shall soon have time on my hands. Now it seems to me that I might soon

learn to take entire care of the chickens, big and little, and that would be

so much less for you to look after. I’m sure I would enjoy it very much,

especially the looking after the little chickens.”

 

“So you really think you’d like to do that?” he asked, as he turned to her

from unharnessing the horses.

 

“Yes, indeed, if you think I’m competent.”

 

“You are more so than I am. Somehow, little chickens don’t thrive under a

busy man’s care. The mother hens mean well, but they are so confoundedly

silly. I declare to you that last year I lost half the little chicks that

were hatched out.”

 

“Well, then,” she replied, laughing, “I won’t be afraid to try, for I think I

can beat you in raising chickens. Now, show me how much you feed them at

night and how much I’m to give them in the morning, and let me take the whole

care of them for a month, get the eggs, and all. If they don’t do so well,

then I’ll resign. I can’t break you in a month.”

 

“It looks more as if you’d make me. You have a good big bump of order, and I

haven’t any at all in little things. Tom Watterly was right. If I had tried

to live here alone, things would have got into an awful mess. I feel ashamed

of myself that I didn’t clear up the yard before, but my whole mind’s been on

the main crops.”

 

“As it should be. Don’t you worry about the little things. They belong to

me. Now show me about the chickens, or they’ll go to roost while we’re

talking.”

 

“But I, as well as the chickens, shall want some supper.”

 

“I won’t let either of you starve. You’ll see.”

 

“Well, you see this little measure? You fill it from this bin with this

mixture of corn and wheat screenings. That’s the allowance, morning and

evening. Then you go out to the barnyard there, and call ‘kip, kip, kip.’

That’s the way my wife used—” He stopped in a little embarrassment.

 

“I’d be glad if I could do everything as she did,” said Alida gently. “It has

grown clearer every day how hard her loss was to you. If you’ll tell me what

she did and how she did things—” and she hesitated.

 

“That’s good of you, Alida,” he replied gratefully. Then, with his directness

of speech, he added, “I believe some women are inclined to be jealous even of

the dead.”

 

“You need never fear to speak of your wife to me. I respect and honor your

feelings—the way you remember her. There’s no reason why it should be

otherwise. I did not agree to one thing and expect another,” and she looked

him straight in the eyes.

 

He dropped them, as he stood leaning against the bin in the shadowy old barn,

and said, “I didn’t think you or anyone would be so sensible. Of course, one

can’t forget quickly—”

 

“You oughtn’t to forget,” was the firm reply. “Why should you? I should be

sorry to think you could forget.”

 

“I fear I’m not like to make you sorry,” he replied, sighing. “To tell you the

truth—” he added, looking at her almost commiseratingly, and then he

hesitated.

 

“Well, the truth is usually best,” she said quietly.

 

“Well, I’ll tell you my thought. We married in haste, we were almost

strangers, and your mind was so distracted at the time that I couldn’t blame

you if you forgot what—what I said. I feared—well, you are carrying out our

agreement so sensibly that I want to thank you. It’s a relief to find that

you’re not opposed, even in your heart, that I should remember one that I knew

as a little child and married when I was young.”

 

“I remember all you said and what I said,” she replied, with the same direct,

honest gaze. “Don’t let such thoughts trouble you any more. You’ve been

kinder and more considerate than I ever expected. You have only to tell me

how she did—”

 

“No, Alida,” he said quietly, obeying a subtle impulse. “I’d rather you would

do everything your own way—as it’s natural for you. There, we’ve talked so

long that it’s too late to feed the chickens tonight. You can begin in the

morning.”

 

“Oh!” she cried, “and you have all your other work to do. I’ve hindered

rather than helped you by coming out.”

 

“No,” he replied decidedly, “you’ve helped me. I’ll be in before very long.”

 

She returned to the house and busied herself in preparations for supper. She

was very thoughtful, and at last concluded: “Yes, he is right. I understand.

Although I may do WHAT his wife did, he don’t wish me to do it AS she did.

There could only be a partial and painful resemblance to his eyes. Both he

and I would suffer in comparisons, and he be continually reminded of his loss.

She was his wife in reality, and all relating to her is something sacred and

past to him. The less I am like her, the better. He married me for the sake

of his farm, and I can best satisfy him by carrying out his purpose in my own

way. He’s through with sentiment and has taken the kindest way he could to

tell me that I’ve nothing to do with his past. He feared, yes, he FEARED, I

should forget our businesslike agreement! I didn’t know I had given him cause

to fear; I certainly won’t hereafter!” and the wife felt, with a trace of

bitterness and shame, that she had been put on her guard; that her husband had

wished to remind her that she must not forget his motive in marrying her, or

expect anything not in consonance with that motive. Perhaps she had been too

wifelike in her manner, and therefore he had feared. She was as sensitive to

such a reproach as she would have been in her girlhood.

 

For once her intuition was at fault, and she misjudged Holcroft in some

respects. He did think he was through with sentiment; he could not have

talked deliberately to Alida or to any other about his old life and love, and

he truly felt that she had no part in that life. It had become a sad and

sacred memory, yet he wished to feel that he had the right to dwell upon it as

he chose. In his downright sincerity he wished her to know that he could not

help dwelling on it; that for him some things were over, and that he was not

to blame. He was profoundly grateful to her that she had so clearly accepted

the facts of his past, and of their own present relations. He HAD feared, it

is true, but she had not realized his fears, and he felt that it was her due

that he should acknowledge her straightforward carrying out of the compact

made under circumstances which might well excuse her from realizing everything

fully.

 

Moreover, direct and matter of fact as he was, he had felt vaguely the

inevitable difficulties of their relationship. The very word “wife” might

suggest to her mind an affection which he believed it was not in his power to

bestow. They had agreed to give an arbitrary and unusual meaning to their

marriage, and, while thinking it could have no other meaning for him, his mind

was haunted, and he feared that hers might be, by the natural significance of

the rite. So far from meaning to hint that she had been too wifelike, he had

meant to acknowledge her simple and natural fulfillment of his wishes in a

position far more difficult to fill than even he imagined. That she succeeded

so well was due to the fact that she entertained for him all the kind feelings

possible except the one supreme regard which, under ordinary circumstances,

would have accounted for the marriage. The reason that all promised to go so

well in their relationship of mere mutual help was the truth that this basis

of union had satisfied their mutual need. As the farmer had hoped, they had

become excellent friends, supplementing each other’s work in a way that

promised prosperity.

 

Without the least intention on the part of either, chance words had been

spoken which would not be without effect. He had told her to do everything in

her own way because the moment he thought of it he knew he liked her ways.

They possessed a novelty and natural grace which interested him. There are

both a natural and a conventional grace, and the true lady learns to blend the

one with the other so as to make a charming manner essentially her own—a

manner which makes a woman a lady the world over. Alida had little more than

natural grace and refinement, unmodified by society. This the plain farmer

could understand, and he was already awakening to an appreciation of it. It

impressed him agreeably that Alida should be trim and neat while about her

work, and that all her actions were entirely free from the coarse, slovenly

manner, the limp carriage, and slatternly aspect of the whole tribe which had

come and gone during the past year. They had all been so much alike in

possessing disagreeable traits that he felt that Alida was the only peculiar

one among them. He never thought of instituting comparisons between her and

his former wife, yet he did so unconsciously. Mrs. Holcroft had been too much

like himself, matter of fact, materialistic, kind, and good. Devoid of

imagination, uneducated in mind, her thoughts had not ranged far from what she

touched and saw. She touched them with something of their own heaviness, she

saw them as objects—just what they were—and was incapable of obtaining from

them much suggestion or enjoyment. She knew when the cherry and plum trees

were in blossom just as she knew it was April. The beautiful sounds and

changes in nature reminded her that it was time to do certain kinds of work,

and with her, work was alpha and omega. As her mother had before her, she was

inclined to be a house drudge rather than a housewife. Thrift, neatness,

order, marked the limits of her endeavor, and she accomplished her tasks with

the awkward, brisk directness learned in her mother’s kitchen. Only mind,

imagination, and refinement can embroider the homely details of life. Alida

would learn to do all that she had done, but the woman with a finer nature

would do it in a different way. Holcroft already knew he liked this way

although he could not define it to himself. Tired as he was when he came home

in the evening, his eyes would often kindle with pleasure at some action or

remark that interested him from its novelty. In spite of his weariness and

preoccupation, , in spite of a still greater obstacle—the inertia of a mind

dulled by material life—he had begun to consider Alida’s personality for its

own sake. He liked to watch her, not to see what she did to his advantage,

but how she did it. She was awakening an agreeable expectancy, and he

sometimes smilingly said to himself, “What’s next?”

 

“Oh, no!”