Mrs. Blair urged Lavinia to go, and so did Marley, and when he saw that she was determined not to go, he urged her all the more strongly, because, now that he was sure of her position, he could so much more enjoy his own disinterestedness and magnanimity. They desisted when Lavinia complained that they were making her life miserable.
Though Marley could deny Lavinia the dance, he found, after all, that he could not deny himself the distinction of giving her a Christmas present. His heroic attitude gradually broke under the temptation of Hoffman’s jewelry store, glittering with its holiday display. Marley already owed Hoffman for Lavinia’s ring, but like most of the merchants in Macochee, Hoffman had to do business on an elastic credit, if he wished to do any business at all, and Marley, after many pains of selection, did not have much difficulty in inducing Hoffman to let him have the pearl opera-glasses he finally chose in the despair of thinking of anything better.
The opera-glasses might have atoned for the deprivation of the ball, had Marley been able to think of them with any comfort. The delight Lavinia expressed in a gift she could never use in Macochee, and the enthusiasm with which Connie admired them, made him nervous and guilty. Connie had temporarily foregone her claims to young-ladyhood, and was a child again for a little while. Her excitement and that of Chad should have made any Christmas Eve merry, but it was not a merry Christmas Eve for Marley.
As Lavinia and he sat in the parlor they caught now and then, or imagined they caught, the strains of the orchestra that was playing for the dancers in the Odd Fellows’ Hall, and they were both conscious that life would be tolerable for them only when the music should cease and the ball take its place among the things of the past, incapable of further trouble in the earth.
“It’s very trying,” said Judge Blair to his wife that night. “I wish there was something we could do.”
“So do I,” his wife acquiesced.
“I don’t like to see Lavinia cut off this way from every enjoyment. The strain must be very wearing.”
“I suppose it is very wearing with most lovers,” said Mrs. Blair. “I don’t see how they ever endure it; but they all do.”
“Have you talked with her about it?” The judge put his question with a guarded look, and was not surprised when his wife quickly replied:
“Gracious, no. I’d never dare.”