“He would guess instantly how matters are,” Agnes reasoned. “I am still too proud to run that risk.”
She took the MS. instead to a New York publisher in whose discretion she could trust, told him of her whim to establish a new reputation which should owe nothing to past gains, and left the story with him. In a week it was accepted and in the printer’s hands. When Baby Agnes—upon whom the mother bestowed the Scotch pet-name of “Nest”—was born, new editions were selling as fast as the press could turn them out.
It was evident, said critics, that the fresh, nervous novel was from the hand of a young writer, skilled in the use of language but unhackneyed by the need of furnishing “pot-boilers.” It was as evident, said readers, that the unknown author had fed the pen directly from his heart, and that personal experience had had much to do with the make-up of the “live book.”
Agnes had held no communication with the discreet publisher since the contract was signed. She had not corrected the proof-sheets, or had an advance copy of the work. There was, therefore, literal truth in her reply to Barton’s query—“Have you read it?”
“I have not even seen the book that I recollect. Who is the author?”
“John C. Hart”—turning to the title page. “What else has he done?”
“The name sounds familiar. Or, perhaps it may be that I am thinking of Professor John S. Hart. You are very kind to think of getting a new book for me! trebly kind to offer to read it to me.”
“It is little enough I can do for the best wife in Christendom!” stooping to kiss her and then Baby Nest asleep in her crib beside Agnes’ reclining chair.
The languid mother, grateful for his society and loverly attentions, was more like his ideal wife than Agnes had been since the eve of her birthday, when he had almost forgotten (through her fault) that he was a gentleman. No explanations had followed the ugly scene. They had met at breakfast the next morning as if the fracas had not occurred, but then and thereafter he had missed something from his married life. Had he tried to analyze the vague, ever present discomfort, he would have said that his wife was always on guard. No surprise of abrupt or rough speech betrayed her into a show of temper or wounded feeling. No overflow of tenderness elicited a confession of answering devotion. When questioned, she was frank in declaring that she loved him, and sought to make him happy in his home and content with her. She was never sad in his sight. Domestic and society duties were cheerfully performed, she was always ready to go out with him when he desired it and gave him her company at home conscientiously. There was the sore spot! He could not prove that her love and duty were perfunctory, but he never got away from the irritating suspicion that they were. Had she been miserable, pettish, or fretfully exacting, it would have accorded better with his creed of the absolute dependence of a woman upon her lord. In plain English—which, however, he would have been ashamed to put into words in any language—it irked him that his mental and moral barometer could not set the weather for his household. There was a something back of Agnes’ even temper and equable spirits he could not touch and that told him she was sufficient unto herself. Into this she seemed to retire as into the cleft of a rock when the matrimonial horizon threatened storm.
There was no one to tell him of mornings spent in the library, or of the work done during the evenings he passed at the club. He ought to have been gratified at her smiling aquiescence in his apologetic representation of the business necessity laid upon a man to mingle socially with “the fellows.” Some women made it preciously disagreeable for husbands who acted upon this compulsion, but his wife was never lonely by day or night. If he came home at eleven o’clock, she was in the library, reading or knitting beside a glowing fire, ready to receive him and to listen with interest to club stories or incidents. If he stayed out after midnight, she went to bed like a sensible Christian and slept soundly.