Part 59 (1/2)

He laughed and put an arm around her. ”No, Mrs. Rector. It's not that kind of parish, thank goodness!”

”Then--” she nestled against him--”I'd rather stay home at night.

Wouldn't you?”

Philip admitted that he would.

His suggestion had come as the result of much covert study of his little wife. Despite her pretty, matronly airs, her contented preoccupation with new duties, he was not altogether satisfied with the look of Jacqueline. He saw things her mother failed to notice--a faint shadow beneath her eyes which made them look oddly dark, a little hollowing of the cheeks, rosy as they were; above all a certain listlessness, a sort of abstraction that she covered by forced gaiety. She appeared to have lost interest in many of the things that used to be her joy; sang often, it is true, but without enthusiasm; rarely rode the fine saddle horse that had come from Storm stables to keep old Tom company, preferring to drive with Philip in the hitherto-despised Ark--preferring apparently above all things to sit at home in front of the fire, with a puppy and her sewing for company. Tomboy Jacqueline with a needle in her hands was a sight which somehow troubled Philip even more than it amused him.

Often when he came upon her unexpectedly, he noted traces of tears about her eyes--a signal always for the sudden flow of high spirits which Philip found at times almost painful.

The girl was not happy. Channing had certainly left his mark.

”d.a.m.n the fellow!” said Philip to himself, most unclerically; and his anger did not cool with time.

He redoubled his tender care of Jacqueline; considerate of every mood, constantly praising and encouraging her, daily planning little surprises for her pleasure (the puppy had been one of them); doing everything possible, in fact, except make love to her. That would have been possible, too, for she was very sweet, a true daughter of Helen; and he a young and normal man, sorely in need of comforting. But guessing what he did of the girl's heart, he would not have offered her the indignity of unwelcome love-making.

”It is just like being married to a dear big brother,” Jacqueline explained navely to her mother. ”Philip is the best friend in the world!”

”I know. He would be, dear fellow,” Kate replied, well content, remembering with a sudden shudder, despite the years which had pa.s.sed, a husband who had never been a friend to her.

Kate was seeing very little of her new son-in-law in those days. Often as she came to the rectory--and she had formed the habit of dropping in once or twice a day on her way to and from her lonely house--she rarely found Philip at home.

”What does he find to do that keeps him so busy these winter days?” she marveled.

”Oh, sick paris.h.i.+oners, and ailing cows, and things like that. He's always tearing about on horseback, or making long journeys somewhere in the Ark--I wish Jemmy had never given it to him! He manages to find duties that keep him out of doors just as long as there's any daylight to see by. And as if that weren't enough, he has fixed up the choir-room over at the church for a sort of study, because he says he can't write sermons with me about--I'm too distracting! Did you ever hear such nonsense? When I sit just as quiet as a mouse, and don't do a thing but watch him, or perhaps sit on a foot-stool beside him and hold the hand he isn't using. You don't need both hands to write a sermon!”

Kate laughed at the picture, looking at her daughter with a fond maternal eye. She could understand that the girl might be somewhat distracting, in her demure little house-dress turned in at the soft throat, and her hair done neatly on top of her head as became a matron, but escaping about her face in glinting chestnut tendrils.

”I suspect it _is_ rather difficult to be a spiritual pastor and master and an attentive bridegroom at the same time,” she commented.

She put the infrequency of Philip's appearances at Storm down to the same cause. ”Young birds to their own nest,” she thought, a little drearily. It is a rule that is rather hard on older birds.

But Jacqueline, her eyes already opened by Jemima, was more observant, and began to realize at last that Philip was trying to avoid her mother.

The thought troubled and frightened her. What had she done? They were her entire world now, Philip and her mother; and any world of Jacqueline's must necessarily be a world of much loving-kindness.

She consulted her sister, distressfully.

”Humph!” said Jemima, and would have liked to add, ”I told you so!”--but did not dare.

Thoughts, however, have an annoying way of communicating themselves independent of words, and Jacqueline nodded sadly, as though she had spoken.

”I know. I oughtn't to have married Philip--you were right. I only wanted to make him happier, and I thought he could go on adoring mother just the same, with me to comfort him in between whiles. But he won't let me,--he won't let me! And he's unhappier than ever.--Oh, Jemmy, what shall I do?”

Jemima for once was at a loss for advice to offer. She thought harsh things of her headstrong, single-minded mother, and yearned over this poor, ignorant, immolated young creature who seemed destined to waste her loveliness on those who could not value it.

”There's nothing to do,” she sighed; adding with a cynicism of which she was not aware, ”Except to wait for mother to grow old. It won't be long now. She _can't_ go on looking like a girl forever!”

”Oh, Jemmy!” exclaimed Jacqueline, shocked and flus.h.i.+ng. ”Philip's not--that sort!”