GOING TO WASHINGTON
Richard's trunk was ready for Washington. His twelve shirts, which Eunice had ironed so nicely, were packed away with his collars and new yarn socks, and his wedding suit, which he was carrying as a mere matter of form, for he knew he should not need it during his three months' absence. He should not go into society, he thought, or even attend levees, with his heart as sore and heavy as it was on this, his last day at home. Ethelyn was not going with him. She knew it now, and never did the face of a six-months wife look harder or stonier than hers as she stayed all day in her room, paying no heed whatever to Richard, and leaving entirely to Eunice and her mother-in-law those little things which most wives would have been delighted to do for their husbands' comfort. Ethelyn was very unhappy, very angry, and very bitterly disappointed. The fact that she was not going to Washington had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt, paralyzing her, as it were, so that after the first great shock was over she seemed like some benumbed creature bereft of care, or feeling, or interest in anything.
She had remained in Camden the most of the day following Mrs. Judge Miller's party, and had done a little shopping with Marcia Fenton and Ella Backus, to whom she spoke of her winter in Washington as a matter of course, saying what she had to say in Richard's presence, and never dreaming that he was only waiting for a fitting opportunity to demolish her castles entirely. Perhaps if Ethelyn had talked Washington openly to her husband when she was first married, and before his mother had gained his ear, her chances for a winter at the capital would have been far greater than they were now. But she had only taken it for granted that she was going, and supposed that Richard understood it just as she did. She had asked him several times where he intended to board and why he did not secure rooms at Willard's, but Richard's non-committal replies had given her no cue to her impending fate. On the night of her return from Camden, as she stood by her dressing bureau, folding away her point-lace handkerchief, she had casually remarked, "I shall not use that again till I use it in Washington. Will it be very gay there this winter?"
Richard was leaning his elbow upon the mantel, looking thoughtfully into the fire, and for a moment he did not answer. He hated to demolish Ethie's castles, but it could not be helped. Once it had seemed very possible that she would go with him to Washington, but that was before his mother had talked to him upon the subject. Since then the fiat had gone forth, and thinking this the time to declare it, Richard said at last, "Put down your finery, Ethelyn, and come stand by me while I say something to you."
His voice and manner startled Ethelyn, but did not prepare her for what followed after she had "dropped her finery" and was standing by her husband.
"Ethelyn," he began, and his eyes did not move from the blazing fire, "it is time we came to an understanding about Washington. I have talked with mother, whose age certainly entitles her opinion to some consideration, and she thinks that for you to go to Washington this winter would not only be improper, but also endanger your life; consequently, I hope you will readily see the propriety of remaining quietly at home where mother can care for you, and see that you are not at all imprudent. It would break my heart if anything happened to my darling wife, or--" he finished the sentence in a whisper, for he was not yet accustomed to speaking of the great hope he had in expectancy.
He was looking at Ethelyn now, and the expression of her face startled and terrified him, it was so strange and terrible.
"Not go to Washington!" and her livid lips quivered with passion, while her eyes burned like coals of fire. "I stay here all this long, dreary winter with your mother! Never, Richard, never! I'll die before I'll do that. It is all--" she did not finish the sentence, for she would not say, "It is all I married you for"; she was too much afraid of Richard for that, and so she hesitated, but looked at him intently to see if he was in earnest.
She knew he was at last--knew that neither tears, nor reproaches, nor bitter scorn could avail to carry her point, for she tried them all, even to violent hysterics, which brought Mrs. Markham, senior, into the field and made the matter ten times worse. Had she stayed away Richard might have yielded, for he was frightened at the storm he had invoked; but Richard was passive in his mother's hands, and listened complacently while in stronger, plainer language than he had used she repeated in substance all he had said about the impropriety of Ethelyn's mingling with the gay throng at Washington. Immodesty, Mrs. Markham called it, with sundry reflections upon the time when she was young, and what young married women did then. And while she talked poor Ethelyn lay upon the lounge writhing with pain and passion, wishing that she could die, and feeling in her heart that she hated the entire Markham race, from Richard down to the innocent Andy, who heard of the quarrel going on between his mother and Ethelyn, and crept cautiously to the door of their room, wishing so much that he could mediate between them.
But this was a matter beyond Andy's ken. He could not even find a petition in his prayer-book suited to that occasion. Mr. Townsend had assured him that it would meet every emergency; but for once Mr. Townsend was at fault, for with the sound of Ethelyn's angry voice ringing in his ears, Andy lighted his tallow candle and creeping up to his chamber knelt down by his wooden chair and sought among the general prayers for one suited "to a man and his wife quarreling." There was a prayer for the President, a prayer for the clergy, a prayer for Congress, a prayer for rain, a prayer for the sick, a prayer for people going to sea and people going to be hanged, but there was nothing for the point at issue, unless he took the prayer to be used in time of war and tumults, and that he thought would never answer, inasmuch as he did not really know who was the enemy from which he would be delivered. It was hard to decide against Ethelyn and still harder to decide against "Dick," and so with his brains all in a muddle Andy concluded to take the prayer "for all sorts and conditions of men," speaking very low and earnestly when he asked that all "who were distressed in mind, body, or estate, might be comforted and relieved according to their several necessities." This surely covered the ground to a very considerable extent; or if it did not, the fervent "Good Lord, deliver us," with which Andy finished his devotions, did, and the simple-hearted, trusting man arose from his knees comforted and relieved, even if Richard and Ethelyn were not.
With them the trouble continued, for Ethelyn kept her bed next day, refusing to see anyone and only answering Richard in monosyllables when he addressed himself directly to her. Once he bent over her and said, "Ethelyn, tell me truly--is it your desire to be with me, your dread of separation from me, which makes you so averse to be left behind?"
There was that in his voice which said that if this were the case he might be induced to reconsider. But though sorely tempted to do it, Ethelyn would not tell a falsehood for the sake of Washington; so she made no reply, and Richard drew from her silence any inference he pleased. He was very wretched those last days, for he could not forget the look of Ethelyn's eye or the sound of her voice when, as she finally gave up the contest, she said to him with quivering nostrils and steady tones, "You may leave me here, Richard, but remember this: not one word or line will I write to you while you are gone. I mean what I say. I shall abide by my decision."
It would be dreadful not to hear a word from Ethie during all the dreary winter, and Richard hoped she would recall her words; but Ethelyn was too sorely wounded to do that. She must reach Richard somehow, and this was the way to do it. She did not come downstairs again after it was settled. She was sick, she said, and kept her room, seeing no one but Richard and Eunice, who three times a day brought up her nicely cooked meals and looked curiously at her as she deposited her tray upon the stand and quietly left the room. Mrs. Markham did not go up at all, for Ethelyn charged her disappointment directly to her mother-in-law, and had asked that she be kept away; and so, 'mid passion and tears and bitterness, the week went by and brought the day when Richard was to leave.