“Of course you would!” Lena said. “You’d like to make yourself beautiful because you’re going to hurry over there to her just as soon as you’ve finished your dinner, aren’t you? That’s what you have been planning, isn’t it?”
“Why, yes; certainly,” he answered. “I’d like to have you go with me. She’s an old friend of mine and all our family; she’s been away a long time, and it wouldn’t look very cordial not to——”
“Why, no; so it wouldn’t!” Lena mocked, but now her mockery was openly acrid. “It wouldn’t look cordial and naturally you’d hate to have her think you lacked cordiality—a woman you were so cordial with you wanted your child to grow up to be like her instead of like its mother!—a woman you were so cordial with you had to hold her hand the very day you brought your bride home! It would be terrible to have her think——”
But here Dan closed the door, though not so sharply as Lena closed the outer door of his bedroom when she went out of it an instant later.
The subject of Martha’s return was not again mentioned directly during the evening; and after dinner, when Lena with arch significance inquired of her silent husband why he had settled down at the library table to write business letters when there was “so much to do in the neighbourhood,” Dan replied, without looking up, that his letters were important—he’d have to beg to be excused from talking. Lena picked up a book, and retired to the easy-chair and the lamp in the bay window, which had once been Harlan’s favourite reading place; but she did not read. She sat looking steadily at her husband—as he thoroughly and uncomfortably understood, though he kept doggedly at his writing.
After a time his mother and father were heard in the hall, going out; and he knew that they were “going over next door” to bid Martha welcome home. They had not mentioned where they were going, and he understood the significance of their not mentioning it—and so did Lena, as she sat watching him. He wondered why he did not rise and say to her: “There’s an old friend of mine next door; I haven’t seen her for years; I ought to go over and tell her I’m glad she’s home, and I want to! There’s no reason I shouldn’t, and you can make the most of it—I’m going!”
Lena had her own wonderings. She wondered why she was keeping her husband from going. Her thought was that she ought to say: “I don’t think I care for you enough any more to have a right to be jealous. Go to your old friend and tell her you’re glad she’s home again, since you wish to. I’m not so small about it as I’m making you think, and I really don’t care.”
Lena wondered why she did not say this to her husband;—in a manner she wanted to say it, and at the same time she knew that she would say nothing of the kind, but on the contrary, intended to keep him in fear of what she might do if he made any effort to appear “cordial,” as he had said, to Martha. Thus the husband and wife sat—the husband bent over his writing and the wife looking at him, her book in her lap. When she looked away from him it was not to the book that her gaze went, but to the wall across the room, where she saw nothing to please her; and when she had looked at the wall for a time she always looked again at Dan. His own eyes were kept to the writing upon the table, yet he must have been conscious of hers when they were upon him, for a deeper frown came upon his forehead whenever she looked away from the wall and again at him.
After a while Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant were heard returning, and in the library it somehow seemed strange, and like an event out of nature’s order, to hear such brisk and cheerful sounds, when the front door opened, letting in the two voices and their owners simultaneously.
“Indeed she is!” Mrs. Oliphant was heard to say, while her husband continued a narrative evidently begun outside.