As the first year of married life goes, Charlotte’s first year was fairly successful. She knew Blake’s faults already, and had made up her mind to them, and if there was a frank indifference in his quiet languor, she had made up her mind to that, too. He was never unkind, and there were times when some fresh evidence of her devotion to him would touch him into an appreciation that was almost responsive. And there were other times when she would find him looking at her with an expression which any other observer might have classed as pity, but which she counted as tenderness. On the whole, it seemed to her that time was bringing them together, as she had counted that it would, and with this hope her face lost its sharp outlines.
Her first heavy chagrin was at the time of her baby’s birth. When Blake came into the room to inquire for her, and she turned down the bed-cover to show him the little bundle at her side, a look of pain and aversion flashed across his face, and he moved away, begging her not to show the baby to him until it was older. On another day she tried to make him select a name for it, and he refused.
“Call it anything you please,” he said at first, but she would not let him go at that.
“I’ve been thinking,” she suggested, with a hesitation that was foreign to her,—“I’ve been thinking of calling her for your mother—Dorcas.”
They were alone in the room, and he was sitting by her bed, but looking away from her into the corner of the room, while she looked anxiously at him. At her words he started, flashing a keen glance at her. “Why should we name her that?” he asked.
There was something so sharply disturbed in his manner, and his distaste for the idea was so evident, that Charlotte flushed in extreme embarrassment.
“I thought you might like to,” she explained.
“Well, I wouldn’t,—I—I don’t think the name’s pretty in itself,” he declared; adding, with a great effort to speak naturally, “I’d rather name her for you.”
Charlotte’s lips came together so closely that all the unpleasant lines showed around them. “I certainly shall not name her for myself,” she said. “You must think of some other name.”
Blake got to his feet. “That’s the only one I can think of,” he said. “If you don’t like it, you can take some other. It’s your affair, not mine.”