"Rubbish! Of course she loves you; I am not talking about that. How will she get along while you are away on your long voyages? She couldn't possibly live in the cabin of a ship, and do you suppose she'd be contented in Salem with you absent for a year!"
"We have as many chances of success as any other marriage," he asserted.
"The whole business is foolish enough."
"That opinion might do for a single shipmaster, with only a month or two out of the year on land. When you were free, Gerrit, your impatience with convention was refreshing and possible. But can't you see that you have given up your liberty! You have tied your hands. However loudly you may cry out against society now you are a part of us, foolish or not. You'll find that your wife has anchored you in Salem, Boston or Singapore, no matter where you go: people will reach and hurt you through her.
"She is very gorgeous and placid, superior on the surface; but the heart,
Gerrit—that isn't made of jade and ivory and silk."
"I'll bring down your presents to-morrow," he told her, avoiding any further present discussion of his marriage. "Has father failed, do you think? His tempers are vigorous as ever."
"He seems baggier about the eyes and throat. He is just as quick, but it exhausts him more. Things would be much better if he were only content to let William manage at the countinghouse. Times are shifting so quickly with these new clipper ships and direct passages and political changes."
"There's no longer any doubt about the clippers," Gerrit declared; "the
California gold rush will attend to that."
In his room he found Taou Yuen, in soft white silk worked with bamboo leaves, on the day bed, smoking. She rose immediately as he entered; and, coming close to him, ran her cool fingers through his hair. He stood gazing out at the dim oil flares that marked the confines of Washington Square, considering all that Rhoda had said. Strangely enough it led his thoughts away from his wife; they reverted to Nettie Vollar.
He had been, he realized, very nearly in love with her: what he meant by that inaccurate term was that if the affair had continued a little longer he would have insisted on marrying her. Nettie was not indifferent to him. An impersonal feeling had attracted him to her—a resentment of her treatment by the larger part of Salem, particularly the oblique admiration of the men. His supersensitiveness to any form of injustice had driven him into the protest of calling and accompanying her, with an exaggerated politeness, about the streets. It had not been difficult; she was warm-blooded, luxurious, a very vivid woman. Gerrit, however, had made a point of repressing any response to that aspect of their intercourse—the sheerest necessity for the preservation of his disdain.
She had cried on his shoulder, in his arms, practically; he had acted in the purely fraternal manner. But the thing was reaching a natural conclusion when her grandfather, Barzil Dunsack, had interfered with his unsupportably frank accusations and command. The Nautilus had been ready for sea, and his, Gerrit's, imperious resentment had carried him out of the Dunsacks' house—to Shanghai and Taou Yuen—without another word to Nettie.