“I should like it,” said Bertha, and a cold shiver went through her.
“Have you got any preference for some particular part?” asked Miss Glover, extracting the book from a little black bag which she always carried.
On Bertha’s answer that she had no preference, Miss Glover suggested opening the Bible at random, and reading on from the first line that crossed her eyes.
“Charles doesn’t quite approve of it,” she said; “he thinks it smacks of superstition. But I can’t help doing it, and the early Protestants constantly did the same.”
Miss Glover, having opened the book with closed eyes, began to read: “The sons of Pharez! Hezron, and Hamul. And the sons of Zerah; Zimri, and Ethan, and Heman, and Calcol, and Dara; five of them in all.” Miss Glover cleared her throat. “And the sons of Ethan; Azariah. The sons also of Hezron, that were born unto him; Jerahmeel, and Ram, and Chelubai. And Ram begat Amminadab; and Amminadab begat Nahshon, prince of the children of Judah.” She had fallen upon the genealogical table at the beginning of the Book of Chronicles. The chapter was very long, and consisted entirely of names, uncouth and difficult to pronounce; but Miss Glover shirked not one of them. With grave and somewhat high-pitched delivery, modelled on her brother’s, she read out the bewildering list. Bertha looked at her in amazement.
“That’s the end of the chapter,” she said at last; “would you like me to read you another one?”
“Yes, I should like it very much; but I don’t think the part you’ve hit on is quite to the point.”
“My dear, I don’t want to reprove you—that’s not my duty—but all the Bible is to the point.”
And as the time passed, Bertha quite lost her courage and was often seized by a panic fear. Suddenly, without obvious cause, her heart sank and she asked herself frantically how she could possibly get through it. She thought she was going to die, and wondered what would happen if she did. What would Edward do without her? Thinking of his bitter grief the tears came to her eyes, but her lips trembled with self-pity when the suspicion came that he would not be heartbroken: he was not a man to feel either grief or joy very poignantly. He would not weep; at the most his gaiety for a couple of days would be obscured, and then he would go about as before. She imagined him relishing the sympathy of his friends. In six months he would almost have forgotten her, and such memory as remained would not be extraordinarily pleasing. He would marry again; Edward loathed solitude, and next time doubtless he would choose a different sort of woman—one less remote from his ideal. Edward cared nothing for appearance, and Bertha imagined her successor plain as Miss Hancock or dowdy as Miss Glover; and the irony of it lay in the knowledge that either of those two would make a wife more suitable than she to his character, answering better to his conception of a helpmate.
Bertha fancied that Edward would willingly have given her beauty for some solid advantage, such as a knowledge of dressmaking; her taste, her arts and accomplishments, were nothing to him, and her impulsive passion was a positive defect. “Handsome is as handsome does,” said he; he was a plain, simple man and he wanted a simple, plain wife.