The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Henley seemed to have lost all memory
of the angry scene on the grass the evening before. Her countenance was
overcast with an expression that her husband would have designated as
one of pleasure had he been given to the analysis of her facial
phenomena, a pursuit he had long since given up as futile and
unprofitable. Her dress, too, showed unusual care, and a crisp,
fresh-ironed jauntiness that jerked him back to the past with rather
disagreeable suddenness. Amid the white ruffles at her neck she had
pinned a large, full-blown rose, and her manner toward the others was a
fragile sort of graciousness which would have been a delight if one
could have felt that it was permanent. As a rule she passed Henley's
coffee to him through the hands of the two Wrinkles, but this morning
she rose and brought it round to him, remarking that she had fixed it
just to his liking. Old Wrinkle, as his intimates--and many
others--knew, was not backward in the use of his tongue, and yet there
was something in the unwonted ceremony of the present meal that silenced
him. The old fellow, however, was making a record-breaking use of his
eyes. Henley saw him taking in every detail of his former
daughter-in-law's appearance and mood, and smiling all too knowingly for
anybody's comfort as he munched and gulped.
After breakfast Henley was at the gate ready to walk to the store when
Wrinkle came to him and clutched his arm familiarly.
"Wait, I'll go 'long with you," he said. "I want to talk to you some,
anyway. Alf, did you ever since the world was made--"
But his words were lost on the morning air, for Mrs. Henley was calling
to her husband from the porch, where she stood smiling at him from the
honeysuckle vines.
"Don't go yet!" she called out, and she tripped down the steps toward
him. She paused at a rose-bush on the way and plucked a bright-red bud,
and, bringing it to him, she began to fasten it on the lapel of his
coat. "You are getting entirely too slouchy," she mumbled, a pin in her
mouth. "You never used to wear such dowdy clothes. You've got to spruce
up--ain't he, Pa?"
"Well, it ain't Sunday, nor camp-meetin'," Wrinkle made answer. "He
looks well enough for every day; he'd look odd with a long, jimswinger
coat on in that dusty store with all them one-gallus mossbacks he makes
his livin' out of. Them fellers 'u'd laugh at 'im an' say he was gittin'
rich too fast at the'r expense."
As red as the flower with which she was trying to adorn him, Henley
pushed the bud away. "I don't want it," he said. "I never was any hand
to put on such things. I'd be a purty sight, now, wouldn't I--walkin' in
town with a flower-garden pinned to me?"
She submitted to his refusal, deftly twining the stem of the flower into
the cheap lace about her neck.
"I've got a favor to ask of you, Alfred," she said, sweetly, "and I
don't want you to refuse it, either. This time I know what I want, and I
must have it."
"Well, what is it?" he asked, his attention diverted from her by the
hungry stare with which old Wrinkle was awaiting the climax of the
little scene.
"Why, I want you to take me to drive."
"To drive!" Henley repeated, as much surprised as if she had asked him
for a trip to Europe, and he heard old Wrinkle laugh out impulsively and
saw him dig his heel into the earth, as, with lowered head, he sought
to hide a broad and too-knowing smile which had captured his facile
mouth. "To drive?"
"Yes, Alfred, it has been a long time since I've seen anything of the
country hereabouts. Why, I've almost forgot how it looks, and this is
the best time of the year. It would do us both good to take a little
jaunt every day in the cool of the evening. We used to go out that way
just before we was married, and for a while afterward, and I want to do
it again. We've got wrong, somehow. We are not living like we ought to.
I say it here before Pa because I mean it, and know he will see it as I
do. Don't you think he ought to take me, Pa?"
"Well, I don't know as I'd sanction your ridin' 'round _late in the
evenin_'." Wrinkle now showed no hint of even hidden merriment. "You
mought git delayed beyond the usual time and supper would hang fire.
Havin' fun an' startin' in to do courtin' over agin is all right an'
proper if a body _feels_ thataway, but doin' it on a starvation basis
ain't good for the health, if it is for the senti_ments_."
"Oh, I'll see that you don't suffer, you old, greedy thing," Mrs. Henley
said, playfully, and caught her husband's arm. "I want you to hitch up,
and get a new lap-robe, and take me to-day--this very evening."
"To-day? Good gracious, what's got into you, Hettie?" Henley stammered,
glancing here and there in sheer helplessness. "I couldn't get off from
business. I've got my hands full of deals of one kind and another.
Driving around is all right for--for young couples that are sparking,
and even for fresh-married ones, but there comes a time when all
sensible folks ought to settle down to the--the enjoyment of home life."
"I see--you have changed." Mrs. Henley now drew herself up austerely and
glared at him coldly. "You think I'm well enough as a drudge about a
dirty old farm-house, but not fit company for riding and driving like
any woman as young as I am is entitled to. You never thought that sort
of a thing was too frivolous before we married, but now you sneer at it.
Well, you just wait till I give you a chance to take me anywhere again.
I lowered my pride to ask it this time, but I won't remind you again.
No, sir."
With a cloud of fury on her face she whirled, and whisked into the
house.
"Come on, Alf," old Wrinkle advised, with a look of amusement in his
eyes. "Let 'er sweat it out alone. She's jest tryin' to work on you,
anyway. She'll be as smooth as goose-grease by night. Looky here, Alf,
I'm an old man, an' you are jest a boy by comparison," he went on, as
they walked down the road together, "but what I don't know about women
you don't know about hosses, and you know a lot. I've learned women inch
by inch all through life. I reckon I got on to it by lyin' around the
fire on cold or wet days and listenin' to 'em. They say some men make a
study of rocks, ores, plants, an' bugs, but my hobby always was females.
Why, I almost know what turn a baby gal will take when it grows up. It
was a sort of funny game with me. I set out to see if I'd ever see a
woman do or say a sensible thing, an' I hain't won yet. Now, you may not
know it, my boy, but you are in hot water, an' it is deep enough to
float yore whiskers. You had married life down about right till just a
few days ago. You could go and come whenever you liked an' nobody axed
any questions. You was about the freest married man I ever knowed, white
or black, yaller or red, but yore day of reckoning has come. I knowed
some'n was wrong last night when you an' Het had that powwow in the
yard, an' I knowed the sun was shinin' too bright this mornin' to do
yore crop any good except to burn it up. I know Het. I've watched her
bury one man an' start in with another, an' if you had been a worryin'
feller she'd have had you mouldin' in the ground long go. As long as
Hettie could worry you she was happy. Part of that grave-rock
celebration was because she 'lowed it bothered you. I couldn't help
hearin' the talk last night. You both spoke louder than you thought, an'
the wind was blowin' my way. Why, man, when you set thar last night an'
told that woman that her undyin' love for Dick was holy an' godly an' a
thing to be kept in a glass case an' looked at every hour in the day--I
say when you throwed all that guff at her you sealed yore doom. Them
words kicked every prop from under her, an' down she come with a flop
that knocked the breath out of all her calculations. She looks fresh and
rosy this morning, but she rolled and tumbled the most of the night. I
don't sleep sound, an' I heard her. I wondered what step she'd take, an'
the breakfast-table grins an' rose-bud and buggy-ride proposition showed
her hand. This mad spell is part of the game. She has set in to make you
do your courtin' over ag'in, an' you'll find that about as unnatural as
wearin' yore vest under yore shirt. No man can court the same woman
twice an' put his heart in the job, but a woman is just so constituted
that she could _have_ it done over an' over by one or a dozen men. I
reckon, as Scriptur' says, it is more blessed to give than to receive,
but a man 'u'd rather not be blessed in the time to come than to have to
make eyes an' say sweet things when he ain't feelin' jest right. Now,
I'll turn back; I jest walked out with you to give you what advice I
could. Git the bit in yore jaw an' pull yore way steady, an' after a
while she'll git tired an' quit naggin' you."
That morning, near noon, as Henley was busy at his work in the rear of
the store, Cahews came back to him with a mild look of surprise on his
face.
"Your wife is out in front in her uncle Ben's carriage," he announced.
"She's dressed for travel--got three or four valises in with her.
Warren, must have sent over after her; the team looks like it's been on
the go for several hours."
Henley found her in the luxurious seat behind the higher one on which
the colored driver, in a battered silk top-hat, sat holding the reins
over a handsome pair of blacks. She looked at him coldly as, hatless and
coatless, he hurried out to her.
"What's this?" he asked, half playfully. "You ain't going to vamoose the
ranch, are you?"
"Uncle Ben's sick," she answered, stiffly. "He sent a note by Ned. He
didn't say for me to come, but he hinted at it several times. I'd show
you what he wrote, but we haven't time to spare. I packed up as quick as
I could. We'll stop at the half-way house for dinner."
"Ben hain't dangerous, is he?" Henley asked, his foot on the
brass-tipped hub of the fore-wheel, his hand on the arm of the seat she
occupied.
"I don't know whether he is or not," the speaker pulled down the veil
under her hat-brim and avoided her husband's eyes, "but he's lonely and
heartbroken over the way that unprincipled woman has treated him, and he
needs petting and nursing and some company in that big, gloomy house to
take his mind off his trouble and humiliation."
"He ought never to have got mixed up with her." Henley was recalling
Wrinkle's sage remarks. "Dealing with a woman you've known all her life
is risky enough, without going as far as Ben did for an opportunity to
get slapped in the face. But he ought to be thankful he found her out in
time."
"Finding her out ain't going to lighten the blow." Mrs. Henley shrugged
her shoulders. "When a man--or a _woman_, for that matter--has full
faith in a person, and finds out that the person ain't anything like he
used to be, why, a body hardly knows what _to_ think. I'm glad I'm
going away, Alfred. You showed me this morning when I give you that
chance to take me about a little here and there that you are changed.
When I'm away you'll realize what you've missed, and I'll be glad of it.
Absence, on my side, is the medicine you need to restore your senses."
"Well, we'll all certainly miss you." Henley was too honest--at least in
domestic matters--to know that his assertion was insincere, and
accustomed as he was in his dealings among men to assume exactly the
shade of tone or set of face that went best with a statement, he now had
as complete an air of regret and discomfort as the most exacting of
wives could have wished.
"Well, I'm getting the drive I asked for," was her parting shot, and she
leaned over and gave him a cold, stiff hand. "I'm taking it all by
myself, as most married women have to do if they don't seek the
attention of other men. But I'm going to do my duty to a human sufferer,
and in that I'll get my reward."
He walked back to the store thoughtfully. "She's gone!" he said to
himself. "She's ripping mad and got it in for me, that's certain. She's
begun on a new line, and I'll bet she makes me smoke before she's
through with me. I know what she wants well enough, but somehow I just
can't do it. I might at one time, but I couldn't now to save my neck
from the loop. The old man is plumb right. When a feller's love gets
cold on the inside he can't warm it up by external applications. He's a
matrimonial misfit, and the sooner he realizes it and is resigned the
better he'll feel."