THE HONEYMOON
From Mrs. Senator Woodhull's elegant house--where Mrs. Judge Markham had
been petted, and flattered, and caressed, and Mr. Judge Markham had been
adroitly tutored and trained without the least effect--the newly wedded
pair went on to Quebec and Montreal, and thence to the White Mountains,
where Ethelyn's handsome traveling dress was ruined and Richard's linen
coat, so obnoxious to his bride, was torn past repair and laid away in
one of Ethelyn's trunks, with the remark that "Mother could mend it for
Andy, who always took his brother's cast-off clothes." The hair trunk
had been left in Chicopee, and so Ethelyn had not that to vex her.
Noticed everywhere, and admired by all whom she met, the first part of
her wedding trip was not as irksome as she had feared it might be.
Pleased, as a boy, with his young bride, Richard was all attention, and
Ethelyn had only to express a wish to have it gratified, so that casual
lookers-on would have pronounced her supremely happy. And Ethelyn's
heart did not ache one-half so hard as on that terrible day of her
bridal. In the railway car, on the crowded steamboat, or at the large
hotels, where all were entire strangers, she forgot to watch and
criticise her husband, and if any dereliction from etiquette did occur,
he yielded so readily to her suggestion that to him seemed an easy task.
The habits of years, however, are not so easily broken, and by the time
Saratoga was reached, Richard's patience began to give way beneath
Ethelyn's multifarious exactions and the ennui consequent upon his
traveling about so long. Still he did pretty well for him, growing very
red in the face with his efforts to draw on gloves a size too small, and
feeling excessively hot and uncomfortable in his coat, which he wore
even in the retirement of his own room, where he desired so much to
indulge in the cool luxury of shirt-sleeves--a suggestion which Ethelyn
heard with horror, openly exclaiming against the glaring vulgarity, and
asking, a little contemptuously, if that were the way he had been
accustomed to do at home.
"Why, yes," he answered. "Out West upon the prairies we go in for
comfort, and don't mind so small a matter as shirt-sleeves on a
sweltering August day."
"Please do not use such expressions as sweltering and go in--they do not
sound well," Ethelyn rejoined. "And now I think of it, I wish you would
talk more to the ladies in the parlor. You hardly spoke to Mrs. Cameron
last evening, and she directed most of her conversation to you, too. I
was afraid she would either think that you were rude, or else that you
did not know what to say."
"She hit it right, if she came to the latter conclusion," Richard said,
good-humoredly, "for the fact is, Ethie, I don't know what to say to
such women as she. I am not a ladies' man, and it's no use trying to
make me over. You can't teach old dogs new tricks."
Ethie fairly groaned as she clasped her bracelets upon her arms and
shook down the folds of her blue silk; then after a moment she
continued: "You can talk to me, and why not to others?"
"You are my wife, Ethie, and I love you, which makes a heap of
difference," Richard said, and winding his arms around Ethie's waist he
drew her face toward his own and kissed it affectionately.
They had been three days at Saratoga when this little scene occurred
and their room was one of those miserable little apartments in the
Ainsworth block which look out upon nothing but a patch of weeds and the
rear of a church. Ethelyn did not like it at all, and liked it the less
because she felt that to some extent her husband was to blame. He ought
to have written and engaged rooms beforehand--Aunt Van Buren always did,
and Mrs. Col. Tophevie, and everybody who understood the ins and outs of
fashionable life. But Richard did not understand them. He believed in
taking what was offered to him without making a fuss, he said. He had
never been to Saratoga before, and he secretly hoped he should never
come again, for he did not enjoy those close, hot rooms and worm-eaten
furniture any better than Ethelyn did, but he accepted it with a better
grace, saying, when he first entered it, that "he could put up with
'most anything, though to be sure it was hotter than an oven."
His mode of expressing himself had never suited Ethelyn. Particular, and
even elegant in her choice of language, it grated upon her sensitive
ear, and forgetting that she had all her life heard similar expressions
in Chicopee, she charged it to the West, and Iowa was blamed for the
faults of her son more than she deserved. At Saratoga, where they met
many of her acquaintances, all of whom were anxious to see the
fastidious Ethelyn's husband, it seemed to her that he was more remiss
than ever in those little things which make up the finished gentleman,
while his peculiar expressions sometimes made every nerve quiver with
pain. The consequence of this was that Ethelyn became a very little
cross, as Richard thought, though she had never so openly attacked him
as on that day, the third after their arrival, when to her horror he
took off his coat, preparatory to a little comfort, while she was
dressing for dinner. At Ethelyn's request, however, he put it on again,
saying as he did so, that he was "sweating like a butcher," which remark
called out his wife's contemptuous inquiries concerning his habits at
home. Richard was still too much in love with his young wife to feel
very greatly irritated. In word and deed she had done her duty toward
him thus far, and he had nothing to complain of. It is true she was very
quiet and passive, and undemonstrative, never giving him back any caress
as he had seen wives do. But then he was not very demonstrative himself,
and so he excused it the more readily in her, and loved her all the
same. It amused him that a girl of twenty should presume to criticise
him, a man of thirty-two, a Judge, and a member of Congress, to whom the
Olney people paid such deference, and he bore with her at first just as
a mother would bear with the little child which assumed a
superiority over her.
This afternoon, however, when she said so much to him, he was conscious
of a very little irritation, for he was naturally high-spirited. But he
put the feeling down, and gayly kissed his six-weeks bride, who, touched
with his forbearance, kissed him back again, and suffered him to hold
her cool face a moment between his hot, moist hands, while he bent
over her.
She did respect him in spite of his vulgarism; nor was she unconscious
of the position which, as his wife, she held. It was very pleasant to
hear people say of her when she passed by:
"That is Mrs. Judge Markham, of Iowa--her husband is a member of
Congress."
Very pleasant, too, to meet with his friends, other M. C.'s, who paid
her deference on his account. Had they stayed away from Saratoga all
might have been well; but alas, they were there, and so was all of
Ethelyn's world--the Tophevies, the Hales, the Hungerfords and Van
Burens, with Nettie Hudson, opening her great blue eyes at Richard's
mistakes and asking Frank in Ethelyn's hearing, "if that Judge Markham's
manners were not a little outré."
They certainly were outré, there was no denying it, and Ethelyn's blood
tingled to her finger tips as she wondered if it would always be so. It
is a pitiable thing for a wife to blush for her husband, to watch
constantly lest he depart from those little points of etiquette which
women catch intuitively, but which some of our most learned men fail to
learn in a lifetime. And here they greatly err, for no man, however well
versed he may be in science and literature, is well educated, or well
balanced, or excusable, if he neglects the little things which good
breeding and common politeness require of him, and Richard was somewhat
to be blamed. It did not follow because his faults had never been
pointed out to him that they did not exist, or that others did not
observe them besides his wife. Ethelyn, to be sure, was more deeply
interested than anyone else, and felt his mistakes more keenly, while at
the same time she was over-fastidious, and had not the happiest faculty
for correcting him. She did not love him well enough to be very careful
of wounding him, but the patience and good humor with which he received
her reprimand that hot August afternoon, when the thermometer was one
hundred in the shade, and any man would have been excusable for
retorting upon his wife who lectured him, awoke a throb of something
nearer akin to love than anything she had felt since the night when she
stood upon the sandy beach and heard the story of Daisy.
Richard was going to do better. He would wear his coat all the time,
both day and night, if Ethelyn said so, He would not lean his elbow on
the table while waiting for dessert, as he had more than once been
guilty of doing; he would not help himself to a dish before passing it
to the ladies near him; he would talk to Mrs. Cameron in the evening,
and would try not to be so absorbed in his own thoughts as to pay no
attention when Mrs. Tophevie was addressing herself directly to him; he
would laugh in the right place, and, when spoken to, would answer in
something besides monosyllables; he would try to keep his hands out of
his pockets and his handkerchief out of his hand, or at least he would
not "snap it," as Ethie said he had done on the first evening of his
arrival at Saratoga. In short, he promised a complete reformation, even
saying that if Ethelyn would select some person who was an fait in those
matters in which he was so remiss, he would watch and copy that man to
the letter. Would she name someone? And Ethelyn named her cousin Frank,
while Richard felt a flush of something like resentment that he should
be required to imitate a person whom in his secret heart he despised as
dandyish, and weak, and silly, and "namby-pamby," as he would probably
have expressed it if he had not forsworn slang phrases of every kind.
But Richard had pledged his word, and meant to keep it; and so it was to
all appearances a very happy and loving couple which, when the dinner
gong sounded, walked into the dining room with Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's set,
Ethelyn's handsome blue silk sweeping far behind her, and her white bare
arm just touching the coat-sleeve of her husband, who was not insensible
to the impression made by the beautiful woman at his side.
There were no lectures that night, for Richard had done his best,
talking at least twenty times with both Mrs. Cameron and Mrs. Colonel
Tophevie, whom he found more agreeable than he had supposed. Then he had
held Ethelyn's white cloak upon his arm, and stood patiently against the
wall, while up at the United States she danced set after set--first, the
Lancers, with young Lieutenant Gray, then a polka with John Tophevie,
and lastly, a waltz with Frank Van Buren, who whirled his fair partner
about the room with a velocity which made Richard dizzy and awoke sundry
thoughts not wholly complimentary to that doubtful dance, the waltz.
Richard did not dance himself, at least not latterly. In his younger
days, when he and Abigail Jones attended the quilting-frolics together
and the "paring bees," he had with other young men, tried his feet at
Scotch reels, French fours, "The Cheat," and the "Twin Sisters," with
occasionally a cotillion, but he was not accomplished in the art. Even
the Olney girls called him awkward, preferring almost anyone else for a
partner, and so he abandoned the floor and cultivated his head rather
than his heels. He liked to see dancing, and at first it was rather
pleasant watching Ethelyn's lithe figure gliding gracefully through the
intricate movements of the Lancers; but when it came to the waltz, he
was not so sure about it, and he wondered if it were necessary for Frank
Van Buren to clasp her as tightly about the waist as he did, or for her
to lean so languidly upon his shoulder.
Richard was not naturally jealous--certainly not of Frank Van Buren; but
he would rather his wife should not waltz with him or any other man, and
so he said to her, asking this concession on her part in return for all
he had promised to attempt; and to Ethelyn's credit we record that she
yielded to her husband's wishes, and, greatly to Frank's surprise,
declined the waltz which he had proposed the following evening. But she
made amends in other dances, keeping poor Richard waiting for her night
after night, until he actually fell asleep and dreamed of the log cabin
on the prairie, where he had once danced a quadrille with Abigail Jones
to the tune of Money-musk, as played by the Plympton brothers--the one
on a cracked violin, and the other on an accordion.
A tap of Mrs. Tophevie's fan brought him back to consciousness, and he
was almost guilty of a sigh as the log cabin faded from his vision, with
the Plymptons and Abigail Jones, leaving instead that heated ballroom,
with its trained orchestra, its bevy of fair young girls, its score of
white-kidded dandies with wasp-like waists and perfumed locks, and Ethie
smiling in their midst.
Saratoga did not agree with Richard. He grew sick first of the water;
then of the fare; then of the daily routine of fashionable follies; then
of the people; and then, oh! so sick of the petty lectures which Ethelyn
gradually resumed as he failed in his attempts to imitate Frank Van
Buren and appear perfectly at ease in everybody's presence. Saratoga was
a "confounded bore," he said, and though he called himself a brute, and
a savage, and a heathen, he was only very glad when toward the last of
August Ethelyn became so seriously indisposed as to make a longer stay
in Saratoga impossible. Newport, of course, was given up, and Ethelyn's
desire was to go back to Chicopee and lie down again in the dear old
room which had been hers from childhood. Aunt Barbara's toast, Aunt
Barbara's tea, and Aunt Barbara's nursing, would soon bring her all
right again, she said; but in this she was mistaken, for although the
toast, and the tea, and the nursing each came in its turn, the September
flowers had faded, and the trees on the Chicopee hills were beginning to
flaunt their bright October robes ere she recovered from the low,
nervous fever, induced by the mental and bodily excitement through which
she had passed during the last three or four months.
Although he knew it was necessary that he should be at home if he would
transact any business before the opening of his next session in
Washington, Richard put aside all thoughts of self, and nursed his wife
with a devotedness which awakened her liveliest gratitude.
Richard was not awkward in the sick-room. It seemed to be his special
providence, and as he had once nursed and cared for Daisy and the baby
brother who died, so he now cared for Ethelyn, until she began to miss
him when he left her side, and to listen for his returning step when he
went out for an hour or so to smoke and talk politics with his uncle,
Captain Markham. With Mrs. Dr. Van Buren and Frank and the fashionable
world all away, Richard's faults were not so perceptible, and Ethelyn
even began to look forward with considerable interest to the time when
she should be able to start for her Western home, about which she had
built many delusive castles. Her piano had already been sent on in
advance, she saying to Susie Granger, who came in while it was being
boxed, that as they were not to keep house till spring she should not
take furniture now. Possibly they could find what they needed in
Chicago; if not, they could order from Boston.
Richard, who overheard this remark, wondered what it meant, for he had
not the most remote idea of separating himself from his mother. She was
very essential to his happiness; and he was hardly willing to confess to
himself how much during the last summer he had missed her. She had a way
of petting him and deferring to his judgment and making him feel that
Richard Markham was a very nice kind of man, far different from
Ethelyn's criticisms, which had sometimes led him seriously to inquire
whether he were a fool or not. No, he could not live apart from his
mother--he was firm upon that point; but there was time enough to say so
when the subject should be broached to him. So he went on nailing down
the cover to the pine box, and thinking as he nailed what a nice kitchen
cupboard the box would make when once it was safely landed at his home
in the prairie, and wondering, too, how his mother--who was not very
fond of music--would bear the sound of the piano and if Ethie would be
willing for Melinda Jones to practice upon it. He knew Melinda had taken
lessons at Camden, where she had been to school, and he had heard her
express a wish that someone nearer than the village had an instrument,
as she should soon forget all she had learned. Somehow Melinda was a
good deal in Richard's mind, and when a button was missing from his
shirts, or his toes came through his socks--as was often the case at
Saratoga--he found himself thinking of the way Melinda had of helping
"fix his things" when he was going from home, and of hearing his mother
say what a handy girl she was, and what a thrifty, careful wife she
would make. He meant nothing derogatory to Ethelyn in these
reminiscences; he would not have exchanged her for a thousand Melindas,
even if he had to pin his shirt bosoms together and go barefoot all his
life. But Melinda kept recurring to his mind much as if she had been his
sister, and he thought it would be but a simple act of gratitude for all
she had done for him to give her the use of the piano for at least one
hour each day.
In blissful ignorance of all that was meditated against her, Ethelyn saw
her piano taken away from the sitting room, where it would never stand
again, and saw the tears which rolled down Aunt Barbara's faded cheeks
as she, too, watched its going, and tried to fill up the vacancy it left
by moving a chair and a table and a footstool into the gap. Those were
hard days for Aunt Barbara, harder than for Ethelyn, who liked the
excitement of traveling, and was almost glad when the crisp October
morning came on which she was to say good-by to the home which was hers
no longer. Her two huge trunks stood in the hall, together with the
square hair trunk which held Richard's wardrobe, and the three tin cans
of peaches Mrs. Captain Markham was sending to her sister-in-law, with
the injunction to be sure and get that particular patent for cans if she
wished her fruit to keep. In addition to these, an immense box had been
forwarded by express, containing, besides Ethelyn's wearing apparel,
many little ornaments and pictures and brackets, which, during the
winter, might perhaps adorn the walls of the parlor where Daisy's
picture hung, and where, Richard had said, was also an oil-painting of
Niagara, omitting to add that it was the handiwork of Melinda Jones,
that young lady having dabbled in paints as well as music during her two
terms schooling at Camden. Tucked away in various parts of the box were
also sundry presents, which, at Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's suggestion, Ethelyn
had bought for her husband's family. For James, who, she had heard
Richard say, was an inveterate smoker, there was a handsome velvet
smoking-cap which, having been bought at Saratoga, had cost an enormous
sum; for John, an expensive pair of elaborately wrought slippers had
been selected; but when it came to Anderson, as Ethelyn persisted in
calling the brother whom Richard always spoke of as Andy, she felt a
little perplexed as to what would be appropriate. Richard had talked
very little of him--so little, in fact, that she knew nothing whatever
of his tastes, except from the scrap of conversation she once
accidentally overheard when the old captain was talking to Richard of
his brothers.
"Does Andy like busts as well as ever?" the captain had asked, but
Richard's reply was lost as Ethelyn walked on.
Still, she had heard enough to give her some inkling with regard to the
mysterious Andy. Probably he was more refined than either James or
John--at all events, he was evidently fond of statuary, and his tastes
should be gratified. Accordingly, Boston was ransacked by Mrs. Dr. Van
Buren for an exquisite head of Schiller, done in marble, and costing
thirty dollars. Richard did not see it. The presents were a secret from
him, all except the handsome point-lace coiffure which Aunt Barbara
sent to Mrs. Markham, together with a letter which she had sat up till
midnight to write, and in which she had touchingly commended her darling
to the new mother's care and consideration.
"You will find my Ethie in some respects a spoiled child--[she wrote]
but it is more my fault than hers. I have loved her so much, and petted
her so much, that I have doubt if she knows what a harsh word or cross
look means. She has been carefully and delicately brought up, but has
repaid me well for all my pains by her tender love. Please, dear Mrs.
Markham, be very, very kind to her, and you will greatly oblige, your
most obedient servant,
"BARBARA BIGELOW.
"P.S. I dare say your ways out West are not exactly like our ways at the
East, and Ethie may not fall in with them at once, perhaps never with
some of them, but I am sure she will do what is right, as she is a
sensible girl. Again, yours with regret, B.B."
The writing of this letter was not perhaps the wisest thing Aunt Barbara
could have done, but she was incited to it by what her sister Sophia
told her of the rumors concerning Mrs. Markham, and her own fears lest
Ethelyn should not be as comfortable with the new mother-in-law as was
wholly desirable. To Richard himself she had said that she presumed that
his mother's ways were not like Ethie's--old people were different from
young ones--the world had improved since their day, and instead of
trying to bring young folks altogether to their modes of thinking, it
was well for both to yield something. That was the third time Richard
had heard his mother's ways alluded to; first by Mrs. Jones, who called
them queer; second, by Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, who, for Ethie's sake had
also dropped a word of caution, hinting that his mother's ways might
possibly be a little peculiar; and lastly by good Aunt Barbara, who
signalized them as different from Ethelyn's.
What did it mean, and why had he never discovered anything amiss in his
mother? He trusted that Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Van Buren, and Aunt Barbara
were mistaken. On the whole, he knew they were; and even if they were
not his mother could not do wrong to Ethie, while Ethie would, of
course, be willing to conform to any request made by a person so much
older than herself as his mother was. So Richard dismissed that subject
from his mind, and Ethelyn--having never heard it agitated, except that
time when, with Mrs. Jones on his mind, Richard had thought proper to
suggest the propriety of her humoring his mother--felt no fears of Mrs.
Markham, senior, whom she still associated in her mind with heavy black
silk, gold-bowed spectacles, handsome lace and fleecy crochet-work.
The October morning was clear and crisp and frosty, and the sun had not
yet shown itself above the eastern hills, when Captain Markham's
carryall drove to Aunt Barbara's gate, followed by the long
democratic-wagon which was to take the baggage. Ethelyn's spoiled
traveling dress had been replaced by a handsome poplin, which was made
in the extreme of fashion, and fitted her admirably, as did every
portion of her dress, from her jaunty hat and dotted lace veil to the
Alexandre kids and fancy little gaiters which encased her feet and
hands. She was prettier even than on her bridal day, Richard thought, as
he kissed away the tears which dropped so fast even after the last
good-by had been said to poor Aunt Barbara, who watched the flutter of
Ethie's veil and ribbons as far as they could be seen, and then in the
secrecy of her own room knelt and prayed that God would bless and keep
her darling, and make her happy in the new home to which she was going.
It was very quiet and lonely in the Bigelow house that day, Aunt Barbara
walking softly and speaking slowly, as if the form of someone dead had
been borne from her side, while on the bed, which the housemaid Betty
had made so plump and round there was a cavity made by Aunt Barbara's
head, which hid itself there many times as the good woman went
repeatedly to God with the pain gnawing so at her heart. But in the
evening, when a cheerful wood fire was kindled on the hearth of her
pleasant sitting room, while Mrs. Captain Markham came in with her
knitting work, to sit until the Captain called for her on his return
from the meeting where he was to oppose with all his might the building
of a new schoolhouse, to pay for which he would be heavily taxed, she
felt better, and could talk composedly of the travelers, who by that
time were nearing Rochester, where they would spend the night.
Although very anxious to reach home, Richard had promised that Ethelyn
should only travel through the day, as she was not as strong as before
her illness. And to this promise he adhered, so that it was near the
middle of the afternoon of the fifth day that the last change was made,
and they took the train that would in two hours' time deposit them at
Olney. At Camden, the county seat, they waited for a few moments. There
was always a crowd of people here going out to different parts of the
country, and as one after another came into the car Richard seemed to
know them all, while the cordial and rather noisy greeting which they
gave "the Judge" struck Ethelyn a little oddly--it was so different from
the quiet, undemonstrative manner to which she had been accustomed. With
at least a dozen men in shaggy overcoats and slouched hats she shook
hands with a tolerably good grace, but when there appeared a tall, lank,
bearded young giant of a fellow, with a dare-devil expression in his
black eyes and a stain of tobacco about his mouth, she drew back, and to
his hearty "How are ye, Miss Markham? Considerable tuckered out, I
reckon?" she merely responded with a cool bow and a haughty stare,
intended to put down the young man, whom Richard introduced as "Tim
Jones," and who, taking a seat directly in front of her, poured forth a
volley of conversation, calling Richard sometimes "Dick," sometimes
"Markham," but oftener "Squire," as he had learned to do when Richard
was justice of the peace in Olney. Melinda, too, or "Melind," was
mentioned as having been over to the "Squire's house helping the old
lady to fix up a little," and then Ethelyn knew that the "savage" was
no other than brother to Abigail Jones, deceased. The discovery was not
a pleasant one, and did not tend to smooth her ruffled spirits or lessen
the feeling of contempt for Western people in general, and Richard's
friends in particular, which had been growing in her heart ever since
the Eastern world was left behind and she had been fairly launched upon
the great prairies of the Mississippi Valley. Richard was a prince
compared with the specimens she had seen, though she did wonder that he
should be so familiar with them, calling them by their first names, and
even bandying jokes with the terrible Tim Jones spitting his tobacco
juice all over the car floor and laughing so loudly at all the "Squire"
said. It was almost too dreadful to endure, and Ethelyn's head was
beginning to ache frightfully when the long train came to a pause, and
the conductor, who also knew Judge Markham, and called him "Dick,"
screamed through the open door "O-l-ney!"
Ethelyn was at home at last.