CHAPTER XXV
COLONEL CRAIGHILL IS ANNOYED
MRS. CRAIGHILL had seen her husband manifest anger on the night of Wayne’s departure for Philadelphia, but she had not until this morning found him crabbed and petulant. A night in a sleeping-car is not conducive to serenity, but a wife has a right to expect her lord to bring a bright countenance home from the wars. Colonel Craighill greeted Jean with his habitual courtesy, but scarcely heeded his wife’s explanation of the young woman’s presence in the house. He excused himself, going to his room to retouch his sleeping-car toilet, and Jean went directly to the Institute. Mrs. Craighill bade her come often to see her; but the invitation lacked warmth and as Jean passed out of the grounds through the snow-walled path she wondered much about the Craighill household. But it was not of Mrs. Craighill or the handsome, courteous Colonel Craighill that she thought most, but of Wayne.
She walked through the crisp morning with her head high; for she was a woman, and it was sweet to know that she had, by his own confession, an influence over a man; that he had asked her help and that she, denying this, had agreed upon a middle ground on which it might be possible to meet and know him. He was less inexplicable to her now. Knowledge of his unpleasant reputation, gathered from newspapers and from chance remarks of ignorant gossips, filled her no longer with repugnance. She tried to recall, over and over again as she tramped toward the Institute, just what she had said to him about labour, and about her belief in it as a means of grace for him; but oftener still she remembered how he had held her hand against his face, not kissing it, for that would have been too much, but holding it against his cheek—her hand that had known labour! And thinking of this she smiled so that passers-by turned to look at the tall, dark girl, with her lifted head and face illumined by happiness.
At the Craighill house happiness was not so legibly written on the two faces at the breakfast table. Colonel Craighill was clearly troubled, and the urbanity with which he asked as to his wife’s health and the state of household affairs did not conceal the vexed undercurrent of his thoughts.
“What has Wayne been doing?” he inquired with a directness that for a moment disconcerted her.
“Oh, he has been in and out about as usual. I have not seen much of him. It was lonely in the house so I asked Miss Morley to stay with me. She’s an Art Institute student that I met at Fanny’s. Fanny has been called South, you know, by the illness of Mr. Blair’s mother.”
“Ah! I’m very sorry to hear that. So Fanny’s not at home.”
He finished his breakfast in silence and then, after a moment’s deliberation, began:
“I’m obliged, my dear Adelaide, to speak of a very unpleasant matter. Your mother persisted in calling on me at the Brodericks’, very greatly to my annoyance. I was amazed that she should be in Boston; I thought she had gone abroad.”
She was silent, wishing him to go on; she had wondered just how he would approach her on this subject.
“I was very greatly embarrassed, I need hardly tell you, to have her looking me up in that way. Very likely she has written you of her call. You may be sure that I was as courteous as possible, but her manner was not just what I should have liked to have my wife’s mother manifest toward me. I have rarely in my life been so pained by any occurrence.”
Some reply was necessary and Mrs. Craighill was prepared.
“I don’t quite understand the spirit that prompts you to speak to me of my mother in this way. She is mistress of her own affairs and she does not go abroad or do anything else merely to please me. It is necessary for me to remember that she is my mother, even though you are anxious to forget it.”
“But, my dear Adelaide, when the visit to the Brodericks’ was so important from every standpoint, don’t you see in what a position it placed me to have Mrs. Allen demanding at the door to see me? It really spoiled what would otherwise have been a very delightful visit.”
“It was unfortunate, as you say,” she replied coldly, though her heart beat fast with the joy of her opportunity. “It was most unfortunate and I deeply regret it. Nothing could have been sadder than for you to have been ashamed to take me to visit the great Brodericks and then to have my mother tumbling in on you, creating, no doubt, an embarrassing encounter with the servant at the sacred door.”
“Adelaide! I don’t understand you—you can’t be aware of what you are saying!”
“I am quite aware of what you have said. You had every expectation of taking me to Boston with you. And I had every expectation of going. But when the Brodericks wrote and asked you to their house, wholly ignoring me, you made it very easy for me to stay at home. The whole thing was as plain as that coffee pot.”
“You are most unjust! I didn’t believe you capable of harbouring such thoughts of me.”
“I had to harbour them when they sailed so boldly into port. It was all perfectly obvious.”
“You are not only unfair to me, but to the Brodericks as well. They had just returned after a long absence and the cards announcing our marriage had failed to reach them.”
“And you took advantage of their ignorance to accept an invitation for yourself without daring to suggest that there was a wife to consider. There wasn’t a wife to consider—she didn’t have to be considered!—that’s all there is to that.”
“I explained all that to you—that night when the letter came—that I didn’t know them well enough to suggest that they include another guest; and that, moreover, I was invited rather impersonally, and I thought that it was to give me a chance to meet Senator Tarleton and have an opportunity, impossible elsewhere, to interest him in our reform work.”
“Well, did you meet the Senator?” she asked, her arms folded on the table and her head bent forward a trifle. She was amused to find his anger against her mother for her invasion of the Brodericks’ diverted to herself, and she willingly accepted the situation. Her husband was not used to answering questions propounded in this impertinent fashion, and his resentment increased.
“Yes; certainly the Senator was there!” he answered with asperity.
“And—Mrs. Tarleton?” she asked with an inflection that did not fail of its intention.
“Well—yes; she was there, very greatly to my astonishment. But that has nothing to do with this matter of my going without you; the two cases are not comparable.”
“You mean, Roger, that the lady and I are not comparable?”
“I mean nothing of the kind! Addie, you pain me more than you can know. I had never expected you would speak to me in the tone you are using.”
“Well, I have spoken to you in this tone because I have a right to maintain my own dignity under this attack you make upon me. I married you with some idea that I was to be your wife, but it seems that that understanding was on my part only. As to my mother, just what is it you wish me to do with her?”
He was very angry now and his voice rose from its usual calm, assured tone.
“I want you to keep your mother away from here! She is an impossible person! She threatens to make you a visit, merely for the purpose of annoying me—to abuse me for not having forced her upon the Brodericks.”
“But you didn’t force her upon them; you managed very cleverly to get rid of her without letting them know she was your mother-in-law. You had asked her to make a visit here when you thought she was going abroad for an indefinite stay, but now that she is on the way to your house you ask me most inhospitably to shut the door in her face—my own mother!”
“I ask you, after her conduct at the Brodericks’, to tell her she cannot come here, not at this time!”
“Yes; I see; it’s to punish her for not being good.”
“She asked me for a loan of money; I had hoped to spare you that, but you force me to tell you in my own defense.”
“Do you know,” she replied with the most delicate shading of insolence in tone and manner, “that I had never understood before the geographical difference between Boston and Pittsburg? It seems that I can be your wife here, but that I am not quite equal to that lofty station among the élite of Boston. It’s a little hard on Pittsburg, isn’t it?”
“You are outrageous—and unreasonable! I had never understood that you were so devoted to your mother—I had thought you superior to her; and now you take a stand with her as against me. It grieves me to be obliged to say to my own wife that I am disappointed in her. Bring your mother here if you like; humiliate me in my house if you want to! I shall have nothing more to say in the matter.”
He rose and struck the table sharply, glowering down at her.
“If that is quite all,” she said sweetly, “I will tell you something. What you have said to me about my mother is not what I expected from you. I know her far better than you do; and now that you have discussed the matter so frankly on your side—how absurd that we should have taken sides!—I will be frank, too, and tell you that one of the reasons for which I married you was to escape from her. I thought, from your showing of respect and affection for me, that I should find in Colonel Craighill a champion and a friend if not quite the ideal lover. And now at the first sign of trouble, at the first opportunity you had to prove my confidence and faith, you not only threw me aside to avoid showing me to your critical acquaintances, but you would wound me by flinging at me my mother—my mother who has never been anything but hateful to me—who would have made traffic of me and sunk me low for her own ends.”
The last words came from her slowly; tears were in her eyes as she rose to her full height and faced him.
“And now,” she ended, “I will say to you that my mother will not trouble you; that she will not”—and Walsh’s words came back to her and she felt secure and comforted as she remembered him—“she will not now, or at any other time, honour this house with her presence.”