“Younger? He’s half a year older than I am.”
“I didn’t say he was younger. But you’re so very grave and he’s so very light. Well, I always told Walter Libby I should get him a wife, but you were the last person I should have thought of. What’s going to become of all your high purposes? You can’t do anything with them when you’re married! But you won’t have any occasion for them, that’s one comfort.”
“It’s not my idea of marriage that any high purpose will be lost in it.”
“Oh, it isn’t anybody’s, before they get married. I had such high purposes I couldn’t rest. I felt like hiring a hall, as George says, all the time. Walter Libby isn’t going to let you practise, is he? You mustn’t let him! I know he’d be willing to do anything you said, but a husband ought to be something more than a mere & Co.”
Grace laughed at the impudent cynicism of all this, for she was too happy to be vexed with any one just then. “I’m glad you’ve come to think so well of husbands’ rights at last, Louise,” she said.
Mrs. Maynard took the little puncture in good part. “Oh, yes, George and I have had a good deal of light let in on us. I don’t suppose my character was much changed outwardly in my sickness,” she suggested.
“It was not,” answered Grace warmly. “It was intensified, that was all.”
Mrs. Maynard laughed in her turn, with real enjoyment of the conception. “Well, I wasn’t going to let on, unless it came to the worst; I didn’t say much, but I kept up an awful thinking. It would have been easy enough to get a divorce, and George wouldn’t have opposed it; but I looked at it in this way: that the divorce wouldn’t have put us back where we were, anyway, as I had supposed it would. We had broken into each other’s lives, and we couldn’t get out again, with all the divorces under the sun. That’s the worst of getting married: you break into each other’s lives. You said something like it to me, that day when you came back from your sail with Walter Libby. And I just concluded that there couldn’t be any trial that wouldn’t be a great deal easier to bear than getting rid of all your trials; and I just made up my mind that if any divorce was to be got, George Maynard might get it himself; a temporary separation was bad enough for me, and I told him so, about the first words I could speak. And we’re going to try the new departure on that platform. We don’t either of us suspect we can have things perfectly smooth, but we’ve agreed to rough it together when we can’t. We’ve found out that we can’t marry and then become single, any more than we could die and come to life again. And don’t you forget it, Grace! You don’t half know yourself, now. You know what you have been; but getting married lets loose all your possibilities. You don’t know what a temper you’ve got, nor how badly you can behave—how much like a naughty, good-for-nothing little girl; for a husband and wife are just two children together: that’s what makes the sweetness of it, and that’s what makes the dreadfulness. Oh, you’ll have need of all your good principles, I can tell you, and if you’ve a mind to do anything practical in the way of high purposes, I reckon there’ll be use for them all.”
Another lady who was astonished at Grace’s choice was more incurably disappointed and more grieved for the waste of those noble aims with which her worshipping fancy had endowed the girl even more richly than her own ambition. It was Grace’s wish to pass a year in Europe before her husband should settle down in charge of his mills; and their engagement, marriage, and departure followed so swiftly upon one another, that Miss Gleason would have had no opportunity to proffer remonstrance or advice. She could only account for Grace’s course on the theory that Dr. Mulbridge had failed to offer himself; but this explained her failure to marry him, without explaining her marriage with Mr. Libby. That remained for some time a mystery, for Miss Gleason firmly refused to believe that such a girl could be in love with a man so much her inferior: the conception disgraced not only her idol, but cast shame upon all other women, whose course in such matters is notoriously governed by motives of the highest sagacity and judgment.
Mrs. Breen hesitated between the duty of accompanying the young couple on their European travels, and that of going to the village where Libby’s mills were situated,—in southern New Hampshire. She was not strongly urged to a decision by her children, and she finally chose the latter course. The mill property had been a long time abandoned before Libby’s father bought it, and put it in a repair which he did not hasten to extend to the village. This had remained in a sort of picturesque neglect, which harmonized with the scenery of the wild little valley where it nestled; and Mrs. Breen found, upon the vigorous inquiry which she set on foot, that the operatives were deplorably destitute of culture and drainage. She at once devoted herself to the establishment of a circulating library and an enlightened system of cess-pools, to such an effect of ingratitude in her beneficiaries that she was quite ready to remand them to their former squalor when her son-in-law returned. But he found her work all so good that he mediated between her and the inhabitants, and adopted it with a hearty appreciation that went far to console her, and finally popularized it. In fact, he entered into the spirit of all practical reforms with an energy and intelligence that quite reconciled her to him. It was rather with Grace than with him that she had fault to find. She believed that the girl had returned from Europe materialized and corrupted; and she regarded the souvenirs of travel with which the house was filled as so many tokens of moral decay. It is undeniable that Grace seemed for a time, to have softened to, a certain degree of self-indulgence. During the brief opera season the first winter after her return, she spent a week in Boston; she often came to the city, and went to the theatres and the exhibitions of pictures. It was for some time Miss Gleason’s opinion that these escapades were the struggles of a magnanimous nature, unequally mated, to forget itself. When they met she indulged the habit of regarding Mrs. Libby with eyes of latent pity, till one day she heard something that gave her more relief than she could ever have hoped for. This was the fact, perfectly ascertained by some summer sojourners in the neighborhood; that Mrs. Libby was turning her professional training to account by treating the sick children among her husband’s operatives.