"A bitter and perplexed 'What shall I do?'
Is worse to man than worse necessity."
Three months have come and gone, and winter is upon us. It is close on
Christmastide indeed. All the trees lie bare and desolate, the leaves
have fallen from them, and their sweet denizens, the birds, flown or
dead.
Evening has fallen. The children are in the nursery, having a last romp
before bed hour. Their usual happy hunting ground for that final fling
is the drawing-room, but finding the atmosphere there, to-night,
distinctly cloudy, they had beaten a simultaneous retreat to Bridget and
the battered old toys upstairs. Children, like rats, dislike discomfort.
Mrs. Monkton, sitting before the fire, that keeps up a continuous sound
as musical as the rippling of a small stream, is leaning back in her
chair, her pretty forehead puckered into a thousand doubts. Joyce, near
her, is as silent as she is; while Mr. Monkton, after a vain pretence at
being absorbed in the morning paper (diligently digested at 11 this
morning), flings it impatiently on the floor.
"What's the good of your looking like that, Barbara? If you were
compelled to accept this invitation from my mother, I could see some
reason for your dismal glances, but when you know I am as far from
wishing you to accept it as you are yourself, why should----?"
"Ah! but are you?" says his wife with a swift, dissatisfied glance at
him. The dissatisfaction is a good deal directed toward herself.
"If you could make her sure of that," says Joyce, softly. "I have tried
to explain it to her, but----"
"I suppose I am unreasonable," says Barbara, rising, with a little laugh
that has a good deal of grief in it. "I suppose I ought to believe,"
turning to her husband, "that you are dying for me to refuse this
invitation from the people who have covered me with insult for eight
years, when I know well that you are dying for me to accept it."
"Oh! if you know that," says Monkton rather feebly, it must be
confessed. This fatally late desire on the part of his people to become
acquainted with his wife and children has taken hold of him, has lived
with him through the day, not for anything he personally could possibly
gain by it, but because of a deep desire he has that they, his father
and mother, should see and know his wife, and learn to admire her and
love her.
"Of course I know it," says Barbara, almost fiercely. "Do you think I
have lived with you all these years and cannot read your heart? Don't
think I blame you, Freddy. If the cases were reversed I should feel just
like you. I should go to any lengths to be at one with my own people."
"I don't want to go to even the shortest length," says Mr. Monkton. As
if a little nettled he takes up the dull old local paper again and
begins a third severe examination of it. But Mrs. Monkton, feeling that
she cannot survive another silence, lays her hand upon it and captures
it.
"Let us talk about it, Freddy," says she.
"It will only make you more unhappy."
"Oh, no. I think not. It will do her good," says Joyce, anxiously.
"Where is the letter? I hardly saw it. Who is asked?" demands Barbara
feverishly.
"Nobody in particular, except you. My father has expressed a wish that
we should occupy that house of his in Harley street for the winter
months, and my mother puts in, accidentally as it were, that she would
like to see the children. But you are the one specially alluded to."
"They are too kind!" says Barbara rather unkindly to herself.
"I quite see it in your light. It is an absolute impertinence," says
Monkton, with a suppressed sigh. "I allow all that. In fact, I am with
you, Barbara, all through: why keep me thinking about it? Put it out of
your head. It requires nothing more than a polite refusal."
"I shall hate to make it polite," says Barbara. And then, recurring to
her first and sure knowledge of his secret desires, "you want to go to
them?"
"I shall never go without you," returns he gravely.
"Ah! that is almost a challenge," says she, flushing.
"Barbara! perhaps he is right," says Joyce, gently; as she speaks she
gets up from the fire and makes her way to the door, and from that to
her own room.
"Will you go without me?" says Barbara, when she has gone, looking at
her husband with large, earnest eyes.
"Never. You say you know me thoroughly, Barbara; why then ask that
question?"
"Well, you will never go then," says she, "for I--I will never enter
those people's doors. I couldn't, Freddy. It would kill me!" She has
kept up her defiant attitude so successfully and for so long that Mr.
Monkton is now electrified when she suddenly bursts into tears and
throws herself into his arms.
"You think me a beast!" says she, clinging to him.
"You are tired; you are bothered. Give it up, darling," says he, patting
her on the back, the most approved modern plan of reducing people to a
stale of common sense.
"But you do think it, don't you?"
"No. Barbara. There now, be a good sensible girl, and try to realize
that I don't want you to accept this invitation, and that I am going to
write to my mother in the morning to say it is impossible for us to
leave home just now--as--as--eh?"
"Oh, anything will do."
"As baby is not very well? That's the usual polite thing, eh?"
"Oh! no, don't say that," says Mrs. Monkton in a little, frightened
tone. "It--it's unlucky! It might--I'm not a bit superstitious, Freddy,
but it might affect baby in some way--do him some harm."
"Very well, we'll tell another lie," says Mr. Monkton cheerfully. "We'll
say you've got the neuralgia badly, and that the doctor says it would be
as much as your life Is worth to cross the Channel at this time of
year."
"That will do very well," says Mrs. Monkton readily.
"But--I'm not a bit superstitious," says he solemnly. "But it might
affect you in some way, do you some harm, and--"
"If you are going to make a jest of it, Freddy----"
"It is you who have made the jest. Well; never mind, I accept the
responsibility, and will create even another taradiddle. If I say we are
disinclined to leave home just now, will that do?"
"Yes," says she, after a second's struggle with her better self, in
which it comes off the loser.
"That's settled, then," says Mr. Monkton. "Peace with honor is assured.
Let us forget that unfortunate letter, and all the appurtenances
thereof."
"Yes: do let us, Freddy," says she, as if with all her heart.
* * * * *
But the morning convinces Monkton that the question of the letter still
remains unsettled. Barbara, for one thing, has come down to breakfast
gowned in her very best morning frock, one reserved for those rare
occasions when people drop in over night and sleep with them. She has,
indeed, all the festive appearance of a person who expects to be called
away at a second's notice into a very vertex of dissipation.
Joyce, who is quite as impressed as Monkton with her appearance, gazes
at her with a furtive amazement, and both she and Monkton wait in a sort
of studied silence to know the meaning of it. They aren't given long to
possess their souls in patience.
"Freddy, I don't think Mabel ought to have any more jam," says Mrs.
Monkton, presently, "or Tommy either." She looks at the children as she
speaks, and sighs softly. "It will cost a great deal," says she.
"The jam!" says her husband. "Well, really, at the rate they are
consuming it--I----"
"Oh, no. The railway--the boat--the fare--the whole journey," says she.
"The journey?" says Joyce.
"Why, to England, to take them over there to see their grandmother,"
says Mrs. Monkton calmly.
"But, Barbara----"
"Well, dear?"
"I thought----"
"Barbara! I really consider that question decided," says her husband,
not severely, however. Is the dearest wish of his heart to be
accomplished at last? "I thought you had finally made up your mind to
refuse my mother's invitation?"
"I shall not refuse it," says she, slowly, "whatever you may do."
"I?"
"You said you didn't want to go," says his wife severely. "But I have
been thinking it over, and----" Her tone has changed, and a slight touch
of pink has come into her pretty cheeks. "After all, Freddy, why should
I be the one to keep you from your people?"
"You aren't keeping me. Don't go on that."
"Well, then, will you go by yourself and see them?"
"Certainly not."
"Not even if I give you the children to take over?".
"Not even then."
"You see," says she, with a sort of sad triumph, "I am keeping you from
them. What I mean is, that if you had never met me you would now be
friends with them."
"I'd a great deal rather be friends with you," says he struggling wildly
but firmly with a mutton chop that has been done to death by a bad cook.
"I know that," in a low and troubled tone, "but I know, too, that there
is always unhappiness where one is on bad terms with one's father and
mother."
"My dear girl, I can't say what bee you have got in your bonnet now, but
I beg you to believe, I am perfectly happy at this present moment, in
spite of this confounded chop that has been done to a chip. 'God sends
meat, the devil sends cooks.' That's not a prayer, Tommy, you needn't
commit it to memory."
"But there's 'God' and the 'devil' in it," says Tommy, skeptically:
"that always means prayers."
"Not this time. And you can't pray to both; your mother has taught you
that; you should teach her something in return. That's only fair, isn't
it?"
"She knows everything," says Tommy, dejectedly. It is quite plain to his
hearers that he regrets his mother's universal knowledge--that he would
have dearly liked to give her a lesson or two.
"Not everything," says his father. "For example, she cannot understand
that I am the happiest man in the world; she imagines I should be better
off if she was somebody else's wife and somebody else's mother."
"Whose mother?" demands Tommy, his eyes growing round.
"Ah, that's just it. You must ask her. She has evidently some _arrière
pensée_."
"Freddy," says his wife in a low tone.
"Well! What am I to think? You see," to Tommy, who is now deeply
interested, "if she wasn't your mother, she'd be somebody else's."
"No, she wouldn't," breaks in Tommy, indignantly. "I wouldn't let her,
I'd hold on to her. I--" with his mouth full of strawberry jam, yet
striving nobly to overcome his difficulties of expression, "I'd beat
her!"
"You shouldn't usurp my privileges," says his father, mildly.
"Barbara!" says Joyce, at this moment. "If you have decided on going to
London, I think you have decided wisely; and it may not be such an
expense after all. You and Freddy can manage the two eldest children
very well on the journey, and I can look after baby until you return. Or
else take nurse, and leave baby entirely to me."
Mrs. Monkton makes a quick movement.