XI.
MARCH 10.
THINGS are even worse than I expected.Ernest evidently looked at me with his father's eyes (and this father has got the jaundice, or something), and certainly is cooler towards me than he was before he went home.Martha still declines eating more than enough to keep body and soul together, and sits at the table with the air of a martyr.
Her father lives on crackers and stewed prunes, and when he has eaten them, fixes his melancholy eyes on me, watching every mouthful with an air of plaintive regret that I will consume so much unwholesome food.
Then Ernest positively spends less time with me than ever, and sits in his office reading and writing nearly every evening.
Yesterday I came home from an exhilarating walk, and a charming call at Aunty's, and at the dinner-table gave a lively account of some of the children's exploits.Nobody laughed, and nobody made any response, and after dinner Ernest took me aside, and said, kindly enough, but still said it, "My little wife must be careful how she runs on in my father's presence.He has a great deal of every thing that might be thought levity."Then all the vials of my wrath exploded and went off.
"Yes, I see how it is," I cried, passionately."You and your father and your sister have got a box about a foot square that you want to squeeze me into.I have seen it ever since they came.And I can tell you it will take more than three of you to do it.There was no harm in what I said-none, whatever.If you only married me for the sake of screwing me down and freezing me up, why didn't you tell me so before it was too late?"Ernest stood looking at me like one staring at a problem he had got to solve, and didn't know where to begin.
"I am very sorry," he said."I thought you would be glad to have me give you this little hint.Of course I want you to appear your very best before my father and sister.""My very best is my real self," I cried."To talk like a woman of forty is unnatural to a girl of my age.If your father doesn't like me I wish he would go away, and not come here putting notions into your head, and making you as cold and hard as a stone.Mother liked to have me 'run on,' as you call it, and I wish I had stayed with her all my life.""Do you mean," he asked, very gravely," that you really wish that?""No," I said, "I don't mean it," for his husky, troubled voice brought me to my senses."All I mean is, that I love you so dearly, and you keep my heart feeling so hungry and restless; and then you went and brought your father and sister here and never asked me if Ishould like it; and you crowded mother out, and she lives all alone, and it isn't right! I always said that whoever married me had got to marry mother, and I never dreamed that you would disappoint me so!""Will you stop crying, and listen to me?" he said.
But I could not stop.The floods of the great deep were broken up at last, and I had to cry.If I could have told my troubles to some one I could thus have found vent for them, but there was no one to whom Ihad a right to speak of my husband.
Ernest walked up and down in silence.Oh, if I could have cried on his breast, and felt that he loved and pitied me!
At last, as I grew quieter, he came and sat by me.
"This has come upon me like a thunderclap," he said."I did not know I kept your heart hungry.I did not know you wished your mother to live with us.And I took it for granted that my wife, with her high-toned, heroic character, would sustain me in every duty, and welcome my father and sister to our home.I do not know what I can do now.Shall I send them away?"No, no!" I cried."Only be good to me, Ernest, only love me, only look at me with your own eyes, and not with other people's.You knew I had faults when you married me; I never tried to conceal them."And did you fancy I had none myself?" he asked.
"No," I replied."I saw no faults in you.Everybody said you were such a noble, good man and you spoke so beautifully one night at an evening meeting.""Speaking beautifully is little to the purpose less one lives beautifully," he said, sadly."And now is it possible that you and I, a Christian man and a Christian woman, are going on and on with scenes as this? Are you to wear your very life out because I have not your frantic way of loving, and am I to be made weary of mine because I cannot satisfy you?""But, Ernest," I said, "you used to satisfy me.Oh, how happy I was in those first days when we were always together; and you seemed so fond me!" I was down on the floor by this time, and looking up into his pale, anxious face.
"Dear child," he said, "I do love you, and that more than you know.
But you would not have me leave my work and spend my whole time telling you so?""You know I am not so silly," I cried.."It is not fair, it is not right to talk as if I were.I ask for nothing unreasonable.I only want those little daily assurances of your affection which I should suppose would be spontaneous if you felt at all towards me as I do to you.""The fact is," he returned, "I am absorbed in my work.It brings many grave cares and anxieties.I spend most of my time amid scenes of suffering and at dying beds.This makes me seem abstracted and cold, but it does not make you less dear.On the contrary, the sense it gives me of the brevity and sorrowfulness of life makes you doubly precious, since it constantly reminds me that sick beds and dying beds must sooner or later come to our home as to those of others."I clung to him as he uttered these terrible words In an agony of terror.
"Oh, Ernest, promise me, promise me that you will not die first," Ipleaded.
Foolish little thing!" he said, and was as silly, for a while, as the silliest heart could ask.Then he became serious again.
"Katy," he said, "if you can once make up your mind to the fact that I am an undemonstrative man, not all fire and fury and ecstasy as you are, yet loving you with all my heart, however it may seem, I think you will spare yourself much needless pain--and spare me, also.""But I want, you to be demonstrative," I persisted.
