He Fell In Love With His Wife - Edward Payson Roe (the speed reading book .txt) 📗
- Author: Edward Payson Roe
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the future are obtrusive. He met Watterly in town, and remarked, “This is
another piece of good luck. I hadn’t time to go out to your place, although I
meant to take time.”
“A piece of good luck indeed!” Tom mentally echoed, for he would have been
greatly embarrassed if Holcroft had called. Mrs. Watterly felt that she had
been scandalized by the marriage which had taken place in her absence, and was
all the more resentful for the reason that she had spoken to a cousin of
uncertain age and still more uncertain temper in behalf of the farmer. In
Mrs. Watterly’s estimate of action, it was either right, that is, in
accordance with her views, or else it was intolerably wrong and without
excuse. Poor Tom had been made to feel that he had not only committed an
almost unpardonable sin against his wife and her cousin, but also against all
the proprieties of life. “The idea of such a wedding taking place in my rooms
and with my husband’s sanction!” she had said with concentrated bitterness.
Then had followed what he was accustomed to characterize as a spell of “zero
weather.” He discreetly said nothing. “It didn’t seem such a bad idea to me,”
he thought, “but then I suppose women folks know best about such things.”
He was too frank in his nature to conceal from Holcroft his misgivings or his
wife’s scornful and indignant disapproval. “Sorry Angy feels so bad about it,
Jim,” he said ruefully, “but she says I mustn’t buy anything more of you.”
“Or have anything more to do with me, I suppose?”
“Oh, come now! You know a man’s got to let his women-folks have their say
about household matters, but that don’t make any difference in my feelings
toward you.”
“Well, well, Tom! If it did, I should be slow to quarrel with a man who had
done me as good a turn as you have. Thank the Lord! I’ve got a wife that’ll
let me have some say about household and all other matters. You, too, are
inclined to think that I’m in an awful scrape. I feel less like getting out
of it every day. My wife is as respectable as I am and a good sight better
than I am. If I’m no longer respectable for having married her, I certainly
am better contented than I ever expected to be again. I want it understood,
though, that the man who says anything against my wife may have to get me
arrested for assault and battery.”
“When it comes to that, Jim,” replied Watterly, who was meek only in the
presence of his wife, “I’d just as lief speak against her as wink if there was
anything to say. But I say now, as I said to you at first, she aint one of
the common sort. I thought well of her at first, and I think better of her
now since she’s doing so well by you. But I suppose marrying a woman situated
as she was isn’t according to regulation. We men are apt to act like the boys
we used to be and go for what we want without thinking of the consequences.”
“It’s the consequences that please me most. If you had been dependent on
Mumpson, Malonys, and Wigginses for your home comfort you wouldn’t worry about
the talk of people who’d never raise a finger for you. Well, goodbye, I’m in
a hurry. Your heart’s in the right place, Tom, and some day you’ll come out
and take dinner with me. One dinner, such as she’ll give you, will bring you
round. One of our steady dishes is a bunch of flowers and I enjoy ‘em, too.
What do you think of that for a hard-headed old fellow like me?”
Some men are chilled by public disapproval and waver under it, but Holcroft
was thereby only the more strongly confirmed in his course. Alida had won his
esteem as well as his good will, and it was the instinct of his manhood to
protect and champion her. He bought twice as many flowers and seeds as she
had asked for, and also selected two simple flower vases; then started on his
return with the feeling that he had a home.
Alida entered upon her duties to the poultry with almost the pleasure of a
child. She first fed them, then explored every accessible nook and hiding
place in the barn and outbuildings. It was evident that many of the biddies
had stolen their nests, and some were brooding upon them with no disposition
to be disturbed. Out of the hundred or more fowls on the place, a good many
were clucking their maternal instincts, and their new keeper resolved to put
eggs under all except the flighty ones that left their nests within two or
three days’ trial. As the result of her search, the empty egg basket was in a
fair way to be full again very soon. She gloated over her spoils as she
smilingly assured herself, “I shall take him at his word. I shall spend
nearly all I make this year in fixing up the old house within and without, so
he’ll scarcely know it.”
It was eleven o’clock before Holcroft drove to the door with the flowers, and
he was amply repaid by her pleasure in receiving them. “Why, I only expected
geraniums,” she said, “and you’ve bought half a dozen other kinds.”
“And I expected to get my own coffee this morning and a good breakfast was
given me instead, so we are quits.”
“You’re probably ready for your dinner now, if it is an hour earlier than
usual. It will be ready in ten minutes.”
“Famous! That will give me a good long afternoon. I say, Alida, when do you
want the flower beds made?”
“No hurry about them. I shall keep the plants in the window for a week or
two. It isn’t safe to put them outdoors before the last of May. I’ll have
some slips ready by that time.”
“Yes, I know. You’ll soon have enough to set out an acre.”
The days of another week passed quietly and rapidly away, Alida becoming
almost as much absorbed in her interests as he in his. Every hour added to
the beauty of the season without. The unplowed fields were taking on a vivid
green, and Holcroft said that on the following Monday the cows should go out
to pasture. Wholesome, agreeable occupation enabled Alida to put away sad
thoughts and memories. Nature and pleasant work are two potent healers, and
she was rallying fast under their ministry. Holcroft would have been blind
indeed had he not observed changes for the better. Her thin cheeks were
becoming fuller, and her exertions, with the increasing warmth of the season,
often flushed her face with a charming color. The old sad and troubled
expression was passing away from her blue eyes. Every day it seemed easier
for her to laugh, and her step grew more elastic. It was all so gradual that
he never questioned it, but his eyes followed her with increasing pleasure and
he listened, when she spoke, with deepening interest. Sundays had been long
and rather dreary days, but now he positively welcomed their coming and looked
forward to the hours when, instead of brooding over the past, he should listen
to her pleasant voice reading his few and neglected books. There was a new
atmosphere in his home—a new influence, under which his mind was awakening in
spite of his weariness and absorption in the interests of the farm. Alida was
always ready to talk about these, and her questions would soon enable her to
talk understandingly. She displayed ignorance enough, and this amused him,
but her queries evinced no stupidity. In reading to her father and in the
cultivation of flowers, she had obtained hints of vital horticultural
principles, and Holcroft said to her laughingly one evening at supper, “You’ll
soon learn all I know and begin to teach me.”
Her manner of deprecating such remarks was to exaggerate them and she replied,
“Yes, next week you will sell my eggs and I shall subscribe for the
agricultural paper my father used to take. Then will begin all the
improvements of book-farming. I shall advise you to sow oats in June, plant
corn in March, and show you generally that all your experience counts for
nothing.”
This kind of badinage was new to the farmer, and it amused him immensely. He
did not grow sleepy so early in the evening, and as he was driving his work
prosperously he shortened his hours of labor slightly. She also found time to
read the county paper and gossip a little about the news, thus making a
beginning in putting him and herself en rapport with other interests than
those which centered in the farm. In brief, she had an active, intelligent
mind and a companionable nature. Her boundless gratitude for her home, which
daily grew more homelike, led her to employ all her tact in adding to his
enjoyment. Yet so fine was her tact that her manner was a simple embodiment
of good will, and he was made to feel that it was nothing more.
While all was passing so genially and satisfactorily to Holcroft, it may well
be supposed that his conduct was not at all to the mind of his neighbors.
News, especially during the busy spring season, permeates a country
neighborhood slowly. The fact of his marriage had soon become known, and
eventually, through Justice Harkins, the circumstances relating to it and
something of Alida’s previous history, in a garbled form, came to be discussed
at rural firesides. The majority of the men laughed and shrugged their
shoulders, implying it was none of their business, but not a few, among whom
was Lemuel Weeks, held up their hands and spoke of the event in terms of the
severest reprehension. Many of the farmers’ wives and their maiden sisters
were quite as much scandalized as Mrs. Watterly had been that an unknown
woman, of whom strange stories were told, should have been brought into the
community from the poorhouse, “and after such a heathenish marriage, too,”
they said. It was irregular, unprecedented, and therefore utterly wrong and
subversive of the morals of the town.
They longed to ostracize poor Alida, yet saw no chance of doing so. They
could only talk, and talk they did, in a way that would have made her ears
tingle had she heard.
The young men and older boys, however, believed that they could do more than
talk. Timothy Weeks had said to a group of his familiars, “Let’s give old
Holcroft and his poorhouse bride a skimelton that will let ‘em know what folks
think of ‘em.”
The scheme found favor at once, and Tim Weeks was soon recognized as organizer
and leader of the peculiar style of serenade contemplated. After his day’s
work was over, he rode here and there summoning congenial spirits. The
project soon became pretty well known in several families, but the elder
members remained discreetly blind and deaf, proposing to wink at what was
going on, yet take no compromising part themselves. Lemuel Weeks winked very
knowingly and suggestively. He kept within such bounds, however, as would
enable him to swear that he knew nothing and had said nothing, but his son had
never felt more assured of his father’s sympathy. When at last the motley
gathering rendezvoused at Tim’s house, Weeks, senior, was conveniently making
a call on a near neighbor.
It was Saturday evening, and the young May moon would furnish sufficient light
without revealing identity too clearly. About a score of young fellows
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