All this while I was trying to win the gracious favor of my mother-in-law, but it was up-hill work. She would answer me with severe politeness, and volunteer an occasional remark intended to be pleasant, but the moment I seemed to be gaining headway, a turn at billiards with Marston, for whom she had a great aversion, a thoughtless expression with a flavor of profanity in it, or my cigars, which I now indulged in without restraint, brought back her freezing air of disapproval.
“Oh, dear!” I yawned sometimes, “why can’t I go ahead and enjoy myself without minding that very respectable and severe old woman?” But I couldn’t do it. I was always feeling the influence of those eyes, and even of her thoughts. I couldn’t get away from it. Sunday came, and Mrs. Pinkerton expressed the hope that we were to attend divine service together. I hadn’t thought of it till that moment, and then it struck me as a terrible bore. There was no church within ten miles except a little white, meek edifice in the neighboring village, occupied alternately by Methodist and Baptist expounders of a very Calvinistic, and, to me, a very unattractive sort of religion. It was not altogether to my mother-in-law’s liking, but she regarded any church as far better than none.
“I presume you will go, sir,” she said, addressing me when I made no reply to the previous hint. She always used “sir,” with a peculiar emphasis, when any suggestion was intended to have the force of a command.
“Well, really, I had not thought about it,” I said, rather vexed, as I secretly made up my mind, reckless of my policy of conciliation, that I would not go at any price. A tedious, droning sermon of an hour and perhaps an hour and a half in a country church, full of dismal doctrines,—the sermon, not the church,—I couldn’t stand, I thought.
Mrs. Pinkerton’s eyes were upon me, waiting for a more definite answer. “I—well, no, I don’t think I really feel like it this morning. I thought I would read to Bessie quietly in our room, and take a rest.”
“Very well, sir,” she said, “Bessie and I will walk down to the village.”
“The deuce you will!” I thought; “walk a mile and a half on a dusty road; to be bored!” I knew it was useless to protest, and I was too wilful to take back what I had said, have the team harnessed, and go, like a good fellow, to church. “No, I’ll be blowed if I do!” I muttered.
So off went the widow and her daughter without me. Bessie tripped around to me on the piazza, looking like a fairy in her white dress and bit of blue ribbon, gave me a sweet kiss, and said, “I’ll be back before dinner. Have a nice quiet time, now.”
“Oh, yes; have a nice quiet time, and you gone off with that old dragon!” It was a wicked thought, for she was not a bit of a dragon, but the feeling came over me that I was going to feel miserable all the forenoon, and so I did. Miss Van and her uncle had gone early to the neighboring town, the largest in the county, for church and the opportunity of observing; Fred and his wife had gone, the night before, round to the other side of the mountains, where there was to be a sort of ball or hop at the leading hotel; and the rest of the people in the house might as well have been in the moon, for all that I cared about them. A nice quiet time! Oh, yes; lounging about and trying to think of something besides Mrs. Pinkerton and my own shabby behavior. I would ten times rather have been in the dullest country church that ever echoed to the voice of the old and unimproved theology of Calvin’s day. But I was in for it, and lay in the hammock and looked through the stables, tried to read, tried to sleep, started on a walk and came back, and almost cursed the quiet country Sunday, as specially calculated to make a man of sense feel wretched.
At last Bessie and her mother returned, and we had dinner. In the afternoon I was an outcast from Mrs. Pinkerton’s favor, but I had Bessie and read to her, and, on the whole, got through the rest of the day comfortably.