Being closely cross-questioned Miss Parker added, that the woman had further given it as her opinion that Mrs. Somerville meant all along to be "that shabby," and was only waiting for a good excuse; that she didn't care a "toss up" for her husband, nor the baby neither, though he "just doted" on both of them.
Yes, Miss Parker had talked with him more than once about his sad, wrecked life. She considered him a weak man rather than an intentionally wicked one. He had never spoken ill of his wife. He said frankly that their marriage was a mistake, and that it was his fault. Irene was too young to be married to any one, but he was fascinated with her, and determined to win her at any cost. The truth was, he said, he cheated her. She was tired of her humdrum life in that dull village where her people spent much of their time; she longed to get away, to travel; above all she wanted to go abroad. She had inferred that, because he was from across the water, and belonged to an old family and could show her pictures of a fine old estate that had been in the family for generations, he was therefore wealthy; and he had let her think so. It was the discovery that she had been deceived in this respect, he said, that made her begin to really dislike him, he thought, instead of being simply indifferent to him, as she had been at first. He made no pretence of believing that she had ever loved him.
No, he could not say that she had ever seemed to love the child. At first she had been angry about it, looking at it merely in the light of a hindrance to the few pleasures she could have, cooped up in a boarding-house; and the strongest feeling she had ever shown for the helpless little creature was toleration.
When they quarrelled, and she threatened to leave him, he had told her that she could not take the baby, and she had replied that it was the last thing she wanted to do. But he had not believed her; he had not thought such a state of mind possible. The little thing, he said, had so wound itself about his heart that the thought of living without her was torture; and he had believed that the mother felt the same, but did not choose to own it. He had taken the baby to a friend of his for the day, and felt secure all day in the thought that Irene would be drawn homeward from wherever she went that morning, by the memory of the clinging arms and smiling baby face. But she had never come back.
At this point Ruth Erskine Burnham lost her studied self-control and said the only unguarded word that she had spoken since the interview began.
"That is monstrous! I cannot credit it. The woman who would do such a thing as that would be a fiend!"
"Oh, no!" said Miss Parker, startled at the feeling she had roused, and remembering that they were speaking of this woman's son's wife. "He did not feel it so, the father. He made excuses for her. Even while he was telling me the story, he stopped to say simply:—
"'You see I didn't stop to consider that she disliked and despised me, by this time, and that the baby was my child; that made all the difference in the world;' and of course it would, Mrs. Burnham."