Part 10 (1/2)

Besides, she still looked for him to take a hint.

He did, after his own fas.h.i.+on. ”You ought to see Judith here,” he laughed to a caller, ”practising her kindergarten methods on me.” His imperturbability was at once a boast and a slight.

”He doesn't mean it,” she apologized, later, protecting herself by defending him. ”You know how men are; the best of them a bit stupid about some things. They don't mean to hurt you. You know it, but you can't help crying.”

”Oh, I understand!” (That any one should sympathize with her! It was not so much her vanity that suffered as her precious regard for him, her pride in their marriage.) ”n.o.body minds little things like that against such devotion and constancy. Why, he talks of you all the time, Judith; of your style, your housekeeping. You are his pet boast.

He says you can do more with less than anybody he ever saw.” And then Judith laughed.

They were all articles of the creed she herself repeated--and doubted more and more. Faithful enough. He never came or went without the customary kiss. When he had typhoid fever, no one might be near him but her, until her exhaustion could no longer be concealed, when he fretted about her--until he fretted himself back into high temperature and had a relapse.

So, run down as she was, she hid it, kept up, went on alone, adding to the score of her inevitable day of reckoning, after the old heroic-criminal woman-way.

She had begun with ideas of their saving together for a purpose; but, not allowed to plan, she must use every opportunity to provide against future stricture; besides, Sam's arbitrary and unregulated spending made her poor little economies both futile and unfair.

”I know nothing about your business. How can I tell if I spend too much?”

”Make your mind easy; I'll keep you posted,” he laughed. _He_ was not bothering about dangerous ground.

”Doubtless,”--dryly. ”But if I spend too little?”

”Not you.”

He did mean it! He didn't care! The half-truth fanned the slow fire growing within her into sudden flame. Judith turned, stammering over the dammed rush of replies.

”My dear, my dear!” he deprecated, amused. ”How easily you lose your temper lately, every time there is a discussion of expenses! Why excite yourself?” Why, indeed? Anger put her at a disadvantage, and making her half wrong, half made him right. ”I don't say I particularly blame you, but you see for yourself you don't keep your balance, and it's mistaken kindness to tempt any woman's natural feminine weakness for luxury and display.”

The retorts were so obvious they were hopeless. She stood looking at him.

His eyebrows lifted; he shrugged his shoulders, went out, and forgot.

Why any of it, indeed? There was no bridge of speech between alien minds. Their life was a continual game of cross-questions and silly answers. Their natures were antipodal; he had the faults that annoyed her most; his virtues were those least compensating.

Was her dream of influencing the children a superst.i.tion too, then?

The children! They slipped the house whenever possible; avoided their father with an almost physical effect of dodging an expected blow; when with him, watched his mood to forestall with hasty attention or divert with strained wit, with timorous hilarity when he proved complaisant. The possibilities for harm to them were numberless. She and Sam were losing the children, and the children were losing everything.

For years they had been a physical and mental outlet for her nature.

That love had no question of reciprocity or merit. She had always been willing for them. Only it seemed to her all the rest of love should come first. It occurred to her ironically how happy her marriage would have been without her husband.

What was his love worth? It was only taxation--taxation without representation. Had either of them any real love left?

Suddenly she stood on the brink of black emptiness. To live without love; her whole nature, every life-habit, changed! _Oh, no, no, no_! So the cold water sets the suicide struggling for sh.o.r.e.

Dear, dear! This would not do. Her nerves were getting the best of her; she was losing her own dignity and sweetness--was on the verge of a breakdown.

But to say so would be to invoke doctors, pointless questions, futile drugs, and a period of acute affection from Sam--affection that took the form chiefly of expecting it of her.

At times Judith thought of death as an escape, but she thought of no other as being any more in her own hands; like so many people, she quoted the Episcopal marriage-service as equal authority with the Bible. She was too live to droop and break as some do. She had not made herself the one armor that would have been effective--her own sh.e.l.l. Friction that does not callous, forms a sore. Her love, her utmost self, ached like an exposed nerve. She had not dreamed one's whole being could be so alive to suffering. She must be alone, to get a hand on herself and things again.

At table one night she wanted them all to know she was going away, for several months perhaps, leaving her cousin Anne in charge. It was all arranged.