Part 44 (2/2)

cried the other wife. ”It's simply horrid to have all this a second time, and Ariadne so little yet. It's _mean_ of Paul.”

She continued voicing an indignant sympathy with her usual energy. Lydia looked at her with a vague smile. At the first words of the childless woman, she had been filled with the mother-hunger which gave savor to her life during those days. As Madeleine went on, she sat unheeding, lost in a fond impatience to feel the tiny body on her knees, the downy head against her cheek. Her arms ached with emptiness. For an instant, so vivid was her sense of it, the child seemed to be there, in her arms.

She felt the eager tug of the soft lips at her breast. She looked down--”Well, anyhow, you poor, dear thing! I hope you will bottle-feed this one! It would be just a little _too_ much if they made you nurse it!”

Lydia did not even attempt a protest. Her submissive, entire acceptance of spiritual isolation seemed an answer to many of the conflicting impulses which had hitherto distracted her. She wished that she could rea.s.sure Madeleine by telling her that she would never again make another ”odd” speech to her. She renounced all common life except the childlike, harmless, animal-like one of mutual material wants, and this renunciation brought her already a peace which, though barren, was infinitely calming after her former struggling uncertainties. ”How did those waists come out that you sent to the cleaner's, Madeleine?” she asked, in a bright, natural tone of interest. ”I hope the blue one _didn't_ fade.”

Madeleine reported to her husband that Lydia had seemed in one of her queer notional moods at first, but cheered up afterward and talked more ”like folks,” and seemed more like herself than she had since her father died. They had a real good visit together she said, and she began to think she could get some good satisfaction out of having Lydia for a neighbor, after all.

But after Lydia was alone, there sprang upon her the terror of living on such terms with Paul. No, no! Never that! It would be dying by inches!

Beaten back to this last inner stronghold of the dismantled castle of her ideals of life, she prepared to defend it with the energy of desperation.

She did not believe Madeleine's story, or, at least, not her interpretation of Paul's att.i.tude, but she felt a dreary chill at his silence toward her. It seemed to her that their marriage ought to have brought her husband an irresistible impulse to have in all their relations with each other a perfect openness. She resolved that she would begin to help him to that impulse that very day; now, at once.

When Paul came in, he seemed abstracted, and went directly upstairs to pack a satchel, stating with his usual absence of explanatory comment that he was called to Evanston on business. He ate his dinner rather silently, glancing furtively at the paper. Only at the breakfast-table--such was their convention--did he allow himself to become absorbed in the news.

Ariadne prattled to her mother of her adventures in the kitchen, where Patsy O'Hern, 'Stas.h.i.+e's cousin Patsy, was visiting her, and he made Ariadne a ”horse out of a potato and toothpicks for legs, and a little wagon out of a matchbox, and a paper doll to sit and drive, and Patsy was perfectly loverly, anyhow, and he was making such a lot of money every day, and, oh, he made the wheels out of potato, too, as round as could be he cut it, and he gave every cent of it to his grandmother and she loved him as much as she did 'Stas.h.i.+e, and wasn't it good to have 'Stas.h.i.+e back, and--”

Paul frowned silently over his pie.

”Come, dear; it's seven o'clock and bedtime,” said Lydia, leading the little girl away.

When she came back she noticed by the clock that she had been gone almost half an hour. She was surprised to see Paul still in the dining-room, as though he had not stirred since she left him. He was sitting in an att.i.tude of moody idleness, singular with him, his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands. He looked desperately, tragically tired.

No inward monitor gave any warning to Lydia of what the next few moments were to be in her life. She crossed the room quickly to her husband, feeling a great longing to be close to him.

As she did so, a rattling clatter of tin was heard from the kitchen, followed by a shout of roaring laughter. Something in Paul's tense face snapped. He started up, overturning his chair. ”Oh, _d.a.m.n_ that idiot!”

he cried.

The door opened behind them. 'Stas.h.i.+e stood there, her red hair hidden in a ma.s.s of soft dough that was beginning to ooze down over her perspiring, laughing face. ”I just wanted to show you what a comycal thing happened, Mis' Hollister,” she began, in her familiar way.

”'Twould make a pig laugh, now! I'd begun my bread dough, and put it on a shelf, an'--”

”Oh, get out of here!” Paul yelled at her furiously. ”And less noise out of you in the kitchen!”

He slammed the door shut on her retreat, and turned to Lydia with a face she did not recognize. The room grew black before her eyes.

”I suppose you still prefer that dirty Irish s.l.u.t to my wishes,” he said.

His words, his accent, the quality of his voice, were the zigzag of lightning to his wife. The storm burst over her head like thunder.

She was amazed to feel a great wave of anger surge up in her, responsive to his own. She cried, in outraged resentment at his injustice: ”You know very well--” and stopped, horrified at the pa.s.sion which rose clamoring to her lips.

”I know very well that my home is the last place where my wishes are consulted,” said Paul, catching her up.

”I will dismiss 'Stas.h.i.+e to-morrow,” returned Lydia with a bitter, proud brevity.

”You're rather slow to take a hint. How long has she been with us? As for your saying that you can't get anyone else, and can't keep house decently as other decent people do, there isn't a word of truth in it!

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