While he was looking under the child’s bed for his best boots, which he remembered casting off there a few hours previous, Caroline, with a meaning smile playing round her lips, as if she had divined his plans, rose automatically, walked with a well-assumed air of sleepiness to the wardrobe, and locking it, put the key in her pocket. Then, as if unaware that his startled orbs were on her, she went to the clock on the mantelpiece and began to wind it, singing the while a little air which she often sung when wholly at ease with herself and all the rest of the world.
Abraham stood behind her rigid form, boots in hand, in silence. Something in Caroline’s prompt flank movement gave him a thrill of vague pleasure, while it aroused his aggressiveness. She had thwarted him, it was true, but in doing so had of her own will raised a hindrance to his quitting the place. Abraham had a struggle with himself. Somehow the room seemed to be more cozy than ever before, while Martha Todd’s house rose bleak and dreary before his mental sight. How amicably all might be arranged if Caroline would only relinquish her dream of “runnin’ water.”
Then it occurred to him that, in justice to his usual sternness of manner, he must say something hard to her, must force the key of the wardrobe from her, and secure his clothing, but he could not do it; he was softened by her quiet mien as she stood in the door and looked out at the night. But if he did not take his clothing to his sister in the morning what excuse could he offer for having failed so ignominiously? He decided that he would wait until the next day and see what could be done; so he went into the adjoining room, the “guest-room,” and retired.
He lay in bed with his eyes open, reflecting over the ridiculous position Caroline had placed him in before his fellow churchmen, and smarting over the knowledge that the Baptists were enjoying his discomfiture.
After a while the lamp was extinguished in Caroline’s room, and by her snoring he knew that she was sound asleep. He knew that it would be an easy matter for him to steal into her room and take the wardrobe key from her gown pocket and get possession of his guarded property, but he shrank from hastening matters in any such way. After a while he slept and snored in harmony with his estranged wife.
When he awoke in the morning a most tempting breakfast was waiting him on the table, and Caroline and little Asphalt were looking neat and interesting. He took his accustomed seat glumly and ate his breakfast with a good relish. His pride prevented him from speaking to the woman from whom he was to be divorced, though it did not in any wise interfere with his partaking of the food she had cooked before he was awake. By his wounded taciturnity he would have her comprehend that his day in the cottage was over, that he only delayed to get a chance to lessen the overpacked wardrobe.
So far, it was true, he had made little headway, but then Rome was not built in a day, and he could afford to abide his time, especially as the immersion season had not yet arrived. But he remembered, with a chill, that on his way to work that morning he would be obliged to pass Martha Todd’s house. She would be expecting him to bring along an armful of clothing. What could he do to excuse his delay? He bethought himself all at once of his Sunday boots and the blacking and blacking-brush, still under Asphalt’s little bed. With them he could pay an installment on his sister’s hopes and also shield himself from the appearance of defeat.
Rising from the table, he reached under the bed, and securing the articles in question he tucked them under his arm and sailed forth without looking at Caroline or Asphalt.
Martha Todd was on the lookout, pacing up and down her front yard. She vanquished a rather open look of curiosity as he sauntered down the sidewalk, and gave her face an expression of absolute vacancy of thought.
“Good mornin’, Abrum?” said she.