It was three days after the young husband, lying in the grass, his cheek
on his wife's hand, had made his careless prophecy about "whistling,"
that Henry Houghton, jogging along in the sunshine toward Grafton for
the morning mail, slapped a rein down on Lion's fat back, and whistled,
placidly enough.... (But that was before he reached the post office.)
His wife, whose sweet and rosy bulk took up most of the space on the
seat, listened, smiling with content. When he was placid, she was
placid; when he wasn't, which happened now and then, she was an alertly
reasonable woman, defending him from himself, and wrenching from his
hand, with ironic gayety, or rallying seriousness, the dagger of his
discontent with what he called his "failure" in life--which was what
most people called his success--a business career, chosen because the
support of several inescapable blood relations was not compatible with
his own profession of painting. All his training and hope had been
centered upon art. The fact that, after renouncing it, an admirably
managed cotton mill provided bread and butter for sickly sisters and
wasteful brothers, to say nothing of his own modest prosperity, never
made up to him for the career of a struggling and probably unsuccessful
artist--which he might have had. He ran his cotton mill, and supported
all the family undesirables until, gradually, death and marriage took
the various millstones from around his neck; then he retired, as the
saying is--although it was really setting sail again for life--to his
studio (with a farmhouse attached) in the mountains. There had been a
year of passionate work and expectation--but his pictures were dead. "I
sold my birthright for a bale of cotton," he said, briefly.
But he still stayed on the farm, and dreamed in his studio and tried
to teach his little, inartistic Edith to draw, and mourned. As for
business, he said, "Go to the devil!"--except as he looked after Maurice
Curtis's affairs; this because the boy's father had been his friend. But
it was the consciousness of the bartered birthright and the dead
pictures in his studio which kept him from "whistling" very often.
However, on this June morning, plodding along between blossoming fields,
climbing wooded hills, and clattering through dusky covered bridges, he
was not thinking of his pictures; so, naturally enough, he whistled; a
very different whistling from that which Maurice, lying in the grass
beside his wife of fifty-four minutes, had foreseen for him--when the
mail should be distributed! Once, just from sheer content, he stopped
his:
"Did you ever ever ever
In your life life life
See the devil devil devil
Or his wife wife wife--"
and turned and looked at his Mary.
"Nice day, Kit?" he said; and she said, "Lovely!" Then she brushed her
elderly rosy cheek against his shabby coat and kissed it. They had been
married for thirty years, and she had held up his hands as he placed
upon the altar of a repugnant duty, the offering of a great
renunciation. She had hoped that the birth of their last, and only
living, child, Edith, would reconcile him to the material results of the
renunciation; but he was as indifferent to money for his girl as he had
been for himself.... So there they were, now, living rather carefully,
in an old stone farmhouse on one of the green foothills of the Allegheny
Mountains. The thing that came nearest to soothing the bruises on his
mind was the possibilities he saw in Maurice.
"The inconsequence of the scamp amounts to genius!" he used to tell his
Mary with admiring displeasure at one or another of Maurice's scrapes.
"Heaven knows what he'll do before he gets to the top of Fool Hill, and
begins to run on the State Road! Look at this mid-year performance. He
ought to be kicked for flunking. He simply dropped everything except his
music! Apparently he _can't_ study. Even spelling is a matter of private
judgment with Maurice! Oh, of course, I know I ought to have scalped
him; his father would have scalped him. But somehow the scoundrel gets
round me! I suppose its because, though he is provoking, he is never
irritating. And he's as much of a fool as I was at his age! That keeps
me fair to him. Well, he has _stuff_ in him, that boy. He's as truthful
as Edith; an appalling tribute, I know--but you like it in a cub. And
there's no flapdoodle about him; and he never cried baby in his life.
And he has imagination and music and poetry! Edith is a nice little clod
compared to him."
The affection of these two people for Maurice could hardly have been
greater if he had been their son. "Mother loves Maurice better 'an she
loves me," Edith used to reflect; "I guess it's because he never gets
muddy the way I do, and tracks dirt into the house. He wipes his feet."
"What do you suppose," Mrs. Houghton said, remembering this summing up
of things, "Edith told me this morning that the reason I loved Maurice
more than I loved her--"
"What!"
"Yes; isn't she funny?--was because he 'wiped his feet when he came into
the house.'"
Edith's father stopped whistling, and smiled: "That child is as
practical as a shuttle; but she hasn't a mean streak in her!" he said,
with satisfaction, and began to whistle again. "Nice girl," he said,
after a while; "but the most rationalizing youngster! I hope she'll get
foolish before she falls in love. Mary, one of these days, when she
grows up, perhaps she and Maurice--?"
"Matchmaker!" she said, horrified; then objected: "Can't she
rationalize and fall in love too? I'm rather given to reason myself,
Henry."
"Yes, honey; you are _now_; but you were as sweet a fool as anybody when
you fell in love, thank God." She laughed, and he said, resignedly, "I
suppose you'll have an hour's shopping to do? You have only one of the
vices of your sex, Mary, you have the 'shopping mind.' However, with all
thy faults I love thee still.... We'll go to the post office first; then
I can read my letters while you are colloguing with the storekeepers."
Mrs. Houghton, looking at her list, agreed, and when he got out for the
mail she was still checking off people and purchases; it was only when
she had added one or two more errands that she suddenly awoke to the
fact that he was very slow in coming back with the letters. "Stupid!"
she thought, "opening your mail in the post office, instead of keeping
it to read while I'm shopping!"--but even as she reproached him, he came
out and climbed into the buggy, in very evident perturbation.
"Where do you want to go?" he said; she, asking no questions (marvelous
woman!) told him. He said "G'tap!" angrily; Lion backed, and the wheel
screeched against the curb. "Oh, _g'on_!" he said. Lion switched his
tail, caught a rein under it, and trotted off. Mr. Houghton leaned over
the dashboard, swore softly, and gave the horse a slap with the rescued
rein. But the outburst loosened the dumb distress that had settled upon
him in the post office; he gave a despairing grunt:
"Well! Maurice has come the final cropper."
"Smith's next, dear," she said; "What is it, Henry?"
"He's gone on the rocks (druggist Smith, or fish Smith?)"
"Druggist. Has Maurice been drinking?" She could not keep the anxiety
out of her voice.
"Drinking? He could be as drunk as a lord and I wouldn't--Whoa,
Lion!... Get me some shaving soap, Kit!" he called after her, as she
went into the shop.
When she came back with her packages and got into the buggy, she said,
quietly, "Tell me, Henry."
"He has simply done what I put him in the way of doing when I gave him a
letter of introduction to that Mrs. Newbolt, in Mercer."
"Newbolt? I don't remember--"
"Yes, you do. Pop eyes. Fat. Talked every minute, and everything she
said a _nonsequitur_. I used to wonder why her husband didn't choke her.
He was on our board. Died the year we came up here. Talked to death,
probably."
"Oh yes. I remember her. Well?"
"I thought she might make things pleasant for Maurice while he was
cramming. He doesn't know a soul in Mercer, and Bradley's game leg
wouldn't help out with sociability. So I gave him letters to two or
three people. Mrs. Newbolt was one of them. I hated her, because she
dropped her g's; but she had good food, and I thought she'd ask him
to dinner once in a while."
"Well?"
"_She did._ And he's married her niece."
"What! Without your consent! I'm shocked that Mrs. Newbolt permitted--"
"Probably her permission wasn't asked, any more than mine."
"You mean an elopement? How outrageous in Maurice!" Mrs. Houghton said.
Her husband agreed. "Abominable! Mary, do you mind if I smoke?"
"Very much; but you'll do it all the same. I suppose the girl's a mere
child?" Then she quailed. "Henry!--she's respectable, isn't she? I
couldn't bear it, if--if she was some--dreadful person."
He sheltered a sputtering match in his curving hand and lighted a cigar;
then he said, "Oh, I suppose she's respectable enough; but she's
certainly 'dreadful.' He says she's a music teacher. Probably caught him
that way. Music would lead Maurice by the nose. Confound that boy! And
his father trusted me." His face twitched with distress. "As for being a
'mere child,'--there; read his letter."
She took it, fumbling about for her spectacles; halfway through, she
gave an exclamation of dismay. "'A few years older'?--she must be
_twenty_ years older!"
"Good heavens, Mary!"
"Well, perhaps not quite twenty, but--"
Henry Houghton groaned. "I'll tell Bradley my opinion of him as a
coach."
"My dear, Mr. Bradley couldn't have prevented it.... Yes; I remember her
perfectly. She came to tea with Mrs. Newbolt several times. Rather a
temperamental person, I thought."
"'Temperamental'? May the Lord have mercy on him!" he said. "Yes, it
comes back to me. Dark eyes? Looked like one of Rossetti's women?"
"Yes. Handsome, but a little stupid. She's proved _that_ by marrying
Maurice! Oh, what a fool!" Then she tried to console him: "But one of
the happiest marriages I ever knew, was between a man of thirty and a
much older woman."
"But not between a boy of nineteen and a much older woman! The trouble
is not her age but his youth. Why didn't she adopt him?... I bet the
aunt's cussing, too."
"Probably. Well, we've got to think what to do," Mary Houghton said.
"Do? What do you mean? Get a divorce for him?"
"He's just married; he doesn't want a divorce yet," she said, simply;
and her husband laughed, in spite of his consternation.
"Oh, lord, I wish I was asleep! I've always been afraid he'd go
high-diddle-diddling off with some shady girl;--but I swear, that would
have been better than marrying his grandmother! Mary, what I can't
understand, is the woman. He's a child, almost; and vanity at having a
woman of forty fall in love with him explains him. And, besides, Maurice
is no Eurydice; music would lead him into hell, not out of it. It's the
other fool that puzzles me."
His wife sighed; "If her mind keeps young, it won't matter so much about
her body."
"My dear," he said, dryly, "human critters are human critters. In ten
years it will be an impossible situation."
But again she contradicted him: "No! Unhappiness is possible; but _not_
inevitable!"
"Dear Goose, may a simple man ask how it is to be avoided?"
"By unselfishness," she said; "no marriage ever went on the rocks where
both 'human critters' were unselfish! But I hope this poor, foolish
woman's mind will keep young. If it doesn't, well, Maurice will just
have to be tactful. If he is, it may not be so _very_ bad," she said,
with determined optimism.
"Kit, when a man has to be 'tactful' with his wife, God help him!--or
a woman with her husband," he added in a sudden tender afterthought.
"We've never been 'tactful' with each other, Mary?" She smiled, and put
her cheek against his shoulder. "'Tactfulness' between a husband and
wife," said Henry Houghton, "is confession that their marriage is a
failure. You may tell 'em so, from me."
"You may tell them yourself!" she retorted. "What are they going to live
on?" she pondered "Can his allowance be increased?"
"It can't. You know his father's will. He won't get his money until he's
twenty-five."
"He'll have to go to work," she said; "which means not going back to
college, I suppose?"
"Yes," he said, grimly; "who would support his lady-love while he was in
college? And it means giving up his music," he added.
"If he makes as much out of his renunciation as you have out of yours,"
she said, calmly, "we may bless this poor woman yet."
"Oh, you old humbug," he told her--but he smiled.
Then she repeated to him an old, old formula for peace; "'Consider the
stars,' Henry, and young foolishness will seem very small. Maurice's
elopement won't upset the universe."
They were both silent for a while; then Mary Houghton said, "I'll write
the invitation to them; but you must second it when you answer his
letter."
"Invitation? What invitation?"
"Why, to come and stay at Green Hill until you can find something for
him to do."
"I'll be hanged if I invite her! I'll have nothing to do with her!
Maurice can come, of course; but he can't bring--"
His wife laughed, and he, too, gave a reluctant chuckle. "I suppose I've
got to?" he groaned.
"_Of course_, you've got to!" she said.
The rest of the ride back to the old stone house among its great trees,
halfway up the mountain, was silent. Mrs. Houghton was thinking what
room she would give the bride and groom--for the little room Maurice had
had in all his vacations since he became her husband's ward was not
suitable. "Edith will have to let them have her room," she thought. She
knew she could count on Edith not to make a fuss. "It's such a comfort
that Edith has sense," she ruminated aloud.
But her husband was silent; there was no more whistling for Henry
Houghton that day.