"You are mistaken, Jane. Mother and home are the soul of the world; they will never pass. I read the other day that Horace Walpole thanked God that he came into the world when there were still such terms as 'afternoon' and 'evening.' I hope I may say I came when the ideas of 'home' and children' were still the moving principles of human society; and I swear that I will do nothing to sink them below the verge. God forbid!"
"John, I am not concerned about principles. My care is not for anything but what concerns ourselves and our home. I tell you plainly I do not desire
children. I will not have any more. I will do all I can to make you honorable and happy. I will order and see to your house, servants, and expenditures. I will love and cherish and bring up properly our dear child. I will make you socially respected. I will read or write, or play or sing to your desire. I will above all other things love and obey you. Is not this sufficient, John?"
"No, I want children. They were an understood consequence of our marriage. I feel ashamed among my fellows——"
"Yes, I suppose you would like to imitate Squire Atherton and take two pews in church for your sons and daughters and walk up the aisle every Sunday before them. It is comical to watch them. And poor Mrs. Atherton! Once she was the beauty of the West Riding! Now she is a faded, draggled skeleton, carelessly and unfashionably dressed, following meekly the long procession of her giggling girls and sulky boys. Upon my word, John, it is enough to cure any girl of the marriage fever to see Squire Atherton and his friend Ashby and Roper of Roper's Mills and Coates of Coates Mills and the like. And if it was an understood thing in our marriage that I should suffer and perhaps die in order that a new lot of cotton-spinners be born, why was it not so stated in the bond?"
"My dear Jane, the trial to which you propose to subject me, I cannot discuss tonight. You have said all I can bear at present. It has been a long, long,
hard day. God help me! Good night!" Then he bowed his head and slowly left the room.
Jane was astonished, but his white face, the sad, yonderly look in his eyes, and the way in which he bit his lower lip went like a knife to her heart.
She sat still, speechless, motionless. She had not expected either his prompt denial of her position or its powerful effect on him physically. Never before had she seen John show any symptoms of illness, and his sudden collapse of bodily endurance, his evident suffering and deliberate walk frightened her. She feared he might have a fit and fall downstairs. Colonel Booth had found his death in that way when he heard of his son's accident on the railway. "All Yorkshiremen," she mused, "are so full-blooded and hot-blooded, everything that does not please them goes either to their brains or their hearts—and John has a heart." Yes, she acknowledged John had a heart, and then wondered again what made him so anxious to have children.
But with all her efforts to make a commonplace event of her husband's great sorrow, she did not succeed in stifling the outcry in her own heart. She whispered to it to "Be still!" She promised to make up for it, even to undo it, sometime; but the Accuser would not let her rest, and when exhaustion ended in sleep, chastised her with distracting, miserable dreams.