Part 19 (1/2)
He looked concerned, and a little pale.
”Oh, Ernest!” I cried, running to him, ”I am so sorry I spoke to you as I did! But, indeed, I cannot stand the way things are going on; I am wearing all out. Everybody speaks of my growing thin. Feel of my hands. They burn like fire.”
”I knew you would be sorry, dear,” he said. ”Yes, your hands are hot, poor child.”
There was a long, dreadful silence. And yet I was speaking, and perhaps he was. I was begging and beseeching G.o.d not to let us drift apart, not to let us lose one jot or t.i.ttle of our love to each other, to enable me to understand my dear, dear husband and make him understand me.
Then Ernest began.
”What was it vexed you, dear? What is it you can't stand? Tell me. I am your husband, I love you, I want to make you happy.”
”Why, you are having so many secrets that you keep from me; and you treat me as if I were only a child, consulting Martha about everything. And of late you seem to have forgotten that I am at the table and never help me to anything!”
”Secrets!” he re-echoed. ”What possible secrets can I have?”
”I don't know,” I said, sinking wearily back on the sofa. ”Indeed, Ernest, I don't want to be selfish or exacting, but I am very unhappy.”
”Yes, I see it, poor child. And if I have neglected you at the table I do not wonder you are out of patience. I know how it has happened.
While you were pouring out the coffee I busied myself in caring for my father and Martha, and so forgot you. I do not give this as an excuse, but as a reason. I have really no excuse, and am ashamed of myself.”
”Don't say that, darling,” I cried, ”it is I who ought to be ashamed for making such an ado about a trifle.”
”It is not a trifle,” he said; ”and now to the other points. I dare say I have been careless about consulting Martha. But she has always been a sort of oracle in our family, and we all look up to her, and she is so much older than you. Then as to the secrets. Martha comes to my office to help me look over my books. I have been careless about my accounts, and she has kindly undertaken to attend to them for me.”
”Could not I have done that?”
”No; why should your little head be troubled about money matters? But to go on. I see that it was thoughtless in me not to tell you what we were about. But I am greatly perplexed and hara.s.sed in many ways.
Perhaps you would feel better to know all about it. I have only kept it from you to spare you all the anxiety I could.”
”Oh, Ernest,” I said, ”ought not a wife to share in all her husband's cares?”
”'No,” he returned; ”but I will tell you all that is annoying me now.
My father was in business in our native town, and went on prosperously for many years. Then the tide turned-he met with loss after loss, till nothing remained but the old homestead, and on that there was a mortgage. We concealed the state of things from my mother; her health was delicate, and we never let her know a trouble we could spare her. Now she has gone, and we have found it necessary to sell our old home and to divide and scatter the family My father's mental distress when he found others suffering from his own losses threw him into the state in which you see him now. I have therefore a.s.sumed his debts, and with G.o.d's help hope in time to pay them to the uttermost farthing. It will be necessary for us to live economically until this is done. There are two pressing cases that I am trying to meet at once. This has given me a preoccupied air, I have no doubt, and made you suspect and misunderstand me. But now you know the whole, my darling.”
I felt my injustice and childish folly very keenly, and told him so.
”But I think, dear Ernest,” I added, ”if you will not be hurt at my saying so, that you have led me to it by not letting me share at once in your cares. If you had at the outset just told me the whole story, you would have enlisted my sympathies in your father's behalf, and in your own. I should have seen the reasonableness of your breaking up the old home and bringing him here, and it would have taken the edge of my bitter, bitter disappointment about my mother.”
”I feel very sorry about that,” he said. ”It would be a real pleasure to have her here. But as things are now, she could not be happy with us.”
”There is no room,” I put in.
”I am truly sorry. And now my dear little wife must have patience with her stupid blundering old husband, and we'll start together once more fair and square. Don't wait, next time, till you are so full that you boil over; the moment I annoy you by my inconsiderate ways, come right and tell me.”
I called myself all the horrid names I could think of.
”May I ask one thing more, now we are upon the subject?” I said at last. ”Why couldn't your sister Helen have come here instead of Martha?”