“I wish we could,” she answered, in her best manner. And she was moving toward the door, the old man in her wake. Neither of them offered to shake hands with me; neither made pretense of saying good-by to Anita, standing by the window like a pillar of ice. I had closed the drawing-room door behind me, as I entered. I was about to open it for them when I was restrained by what I saw working in the old woman’s face. She had set her will on escaping from my loathed presence without a “scene”; but her rage at having been outgeneraled was too fractious for her will.
“You scoundrel!” she hissed, her whole body shaking and her carefully cultivated appearance of the gracious evening of youth swallowed up in a black cyclone of hate. “You gutter plant! God will punish you for the shame you have brought upon us.”
I opened the door and bowed, without a word, without even the desire to return insult for insult—had not Anita again and finally rejected them and chosen me? As they passed into the private hall I rang for Sanders to come and let them out. When I turned back into the drawing room, Anita was seated, was reading a book. I waited until I saw she was not going to speak. Then I said: “What time will you have dinner?” But my face must have been expressing some of the joy and gratitude that filled me. “She has chosen me!” I was saying to myself over and over.
“Whenever you usually have it,” she replied, without looking up.
“At seven o’clock, then. You had better tell Sanders.” And I rang for him and went into my little smoking room. She had resisted her parents’ final appeal to her to return to them. She had cast in her lot with me. “The rest can be left to time,” said I to myself. And, reviewing all that had happened, I let a wild hope thrust tenacious roots deep into me—the hope that she did not quite understand her own mind as to me. How often ignorance is a blessing; how often knowledge would make the step falter and the heart quail. Who would have the courage, not to speak of the desire, to live his life, if he knew his own future?
XV.
During dinner I bore the whole burden of conversation—though burden I did not find it. Like most of the most reticent men, I am extremely talkative. Silence sets people to wondering and prying; he hides his secrets best who hides them at the bottom of a river of words. If my spirits are high, I often talk aloud to myself when there is no one convenient. And how could my spirits be anything but high, with her sitting there opposite me, mine, mine for better or for worse, through good and evil report—my wife!
She was only formally responsive, reluctant and brief in answers, volunteering nothing. The servants waiting on us no doubt laid her manner to shyness; I understood it, or thought I did—but I was not troubled. It is as natural for me to hope as to breathe; and with my knowledge of character, how could I take seriously the moods and impulses of one whom I regarded as a childlike girl, trained in false pride and false ideals? “She has chosen to stay with me,” said I to myself. “Actions count, not words or manner. A few days or weeks, and she will be herself, and mine.” And I went gayly on with my efforts to interest her, to make her smile and forget the rôle she had commanded herself to play. Nor was I wholly unsuccessful. Again and again I thought I saw a gleam of interest in her eyes or the beginnings of a smile about that sweet mouth of hers. I was careful not to overdo my part. As soon as we finished dessert I said: “You loathe cigar smoke, so I’ll hide myself in my den. Sanders will bring you the cigarettes.” I had myself telephoned for a supply of her kind early in the day.
She made a polite protest for the benefit of the servants; but I was firm, and she was free to think things over alone in the drawing room—“your sitting room,” I called it now. I had not finished a small cigar when there came a timid knock at my door. I threw away the cigar and opened. “I thought it was you,” said I. “I’m familiar with the knocks of all the others. And this was new—like a summer wind tapping with a flower for admission at a closed window.” And I laughed with a little raillery, and she smiled, colored, tried to seem cold and hostile again.
“Shall I go with you to your sitting room?” I went on. “Perhaps the cigar smoke here——”