"I've read of cases where a girl gives up the man that loves her so as to make some other girl happy that the man doesn't love.That might be done.""Your father would think you were a fool," said Mrs.Lapham, finding a sort of refuge in her strong disgust for the pseudo heroism."No! If there's to be any giving up, let it be by the one that shan't make anybody but herself suffer.There's trouble and sorrow enough in the world, without MAKING it on purpose!"She unlocked the door, but Penelope slipped round and set herself against it."Irene shall not give up!""I will see your father about it," said the mother.
"Let me out now----"
"Don't let Irene come here!"
"No.I will tell her that you haven't slept.Go to bed now, and try to get some rest.She isn't up herself yet.
You must have some breakfast."
"No; let me sleep if I can.I can get something when Iwake up.I'll come down if I can't sleep.Life has got to go on.It does when there's a death in the house, and this is only a little worse.""Don't you talk nonsense!" cried Mrs.Lapham, with angry authority.
"Well, a little better, then," said Penelope, with meek concession.
Mrs.Lapham attempted to say something, and could not.
She went out and opened Irene's door.The girl lifted her head drowsily from her pillow "Don't disturb your sister when you get up, Irene.She hasn't slept well----"
"PLEASE don't talk! I'm almost DEAD with sleep!"returned Irene."Do go, mamma! I shan't disturb her."She turned her face down in the pillow, and pulled the covering up over her ears.
The mother slowly closed the door and went downstairs, feeling bewildered and baffled almost beyond the power to move.The time had been when she would have tried to find out why this judgment had been sent upon her.
But now she could not feel that the innocent suffering of others was inflicted for her fault;she shrank instinctively from that cruel and egotistic misinterpretation of the mystery of pain and loss.
She saw her two children, equally if differently dear to her, destined to trouble that nothing could avert, and she could not blame either of them; she could not blame the means of this misery to them; he was as innocent as they, and though her heart was sore against him in this first moment, she could still be just to him in it.
She was a woman who had been used to seek the light by striving; she had hitherto literally worked to it.
But it is the curse of prosperity that it takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of spirit.
In this house, where everything had come to be done for her, she had no tasks to interpose between her and her despair.She sat down in her own room and let her hands fall in her lap,--the hands that had once been so helpful and busy,--and tried to think it all out.
She had never heard of the fate that was once supposed to appoint the sorrows of men irrespective of their blamelessness or blame, before the time when it came to be believed that sorrows were penalties; but in her simple way she recognised something like that mythic power when she rose from her struggle with the problem, and said aloud to herself, "Well, the witch is in it."Turn which way she would, she saw no escape from the misery to come--the misery which had come already to Penelope and herself, and that must come to Irene and her father.
She started when she definitely thought of her husband, and thought with what violence it would work in every fibre of his rude strength.She feared that, and she feared something worse--the effect which his pride and ambition might seek to give it; and it was with terror of this, as well as the natural trust with which a woman must turn to her husband in any anxiety at last, that she felt she could not wait for evening to take counsel with him.
When she considered how wrongly he might take it all, it seemed as if it were already known to him, and she was impatient to prevent his error.
She sent out for a messenger, whom she despatched with a note to his place of business: "Silas, I should like to ride with you this afternoon.Can't you come home early? Persis."And she was at dinner with Irene, evading her questions about Penelope, when answer came that he would be at the house with the buggy at half-past two.It is easy to put off a girl who has but one thing in her head; but though Mrs.Lapham could escape without telling anything of Penelope, she could not escape seeing how wholly Irene was engrossed with hopes now turned so vain and impossible.She was still talking of that dinner, of nothing but that dinner, and begging for flattery of herself and praise of him, which her mother had till now been so ready to give.
"Seems to me you don't take very much interest, mamma!"she said, laughing and blushing at one point.
"Yes,--yes, I do," protested Mrs.Lapham, and then the girl prattled on.
"I guess I shall get one of those pins that Nanny Corey had in her hair.I think it would become me, don't you?""Yes; but Irene--I don't like to have you go on so, till--unless he's said something to show--You oughtn't to give yourself up to thinking----" But at this the girl turned so white, and looked such reproach at her, that she added frantically: "Yes, get the pin.It is just the thing for you! But don't disturb Penelope.
Let her alone till I get back.I'm going out to ride with your father.He'll be here in half an hour.
Are you through? Ring, then.Get yourself that fan you saw the other day.Your father won't say anything; he likes to have you look well.I could see his eyes on you half the time the other night.""I should have liked to have Pen go with me," said Irene, restored to her normal state of innocent selfishness by these flatteries."Don't you suppose she'll be up in time? What's the matter with her that she didn't sleep?""I don't know.Better let her alone."
"Well," submitted Irene.
