It is impossible to say when the little worries, annoyances and
disagreements began, when I first felt a restlessness creeping over me. I
tried to hide these moods from her, but always she divined them. And yet
I was sure that I loved Maude; in a surprisingly short period I had
become accustomed to her, dependent on her ministrations and the normal,
cosy intimacy of our companionship. I did not like to think that the keen
edge of the enjoyment of possession was wearing a little, while at the
same time I philosophized that the divine fire, when legalized, settles
down to a comfortable glow. The desire to go home that grew upon me I
attributed to the irritation aroused by the spectacle of a fixed social
order commanding such unquestioned deference from the many who were
content to remain resignedly outside of it. Before the setting in of the
Liberal movement and the "American invasion" England was a country in
which (from my point of view) one must be "somebody" in order to be
happy. I was "somebody" at home; or at least rapidly becoming so....
London was shrouded, parliament had risen, and the great houses were
closed. Day after day we issued forth from a musty and highly respectable
hotel near Piccadilly to a gloomy Tower, a soggy Hampton Court or a
mournful British Museum. Our native longing for luxury--or rather my
native longing--impelled me to abandon Smith's Hotel for a huge hostelry
where our suite overlooked the Thames, where we ran across a man I had
known slightly at Harvard, and other Americans with whom we made
excursions and dined and went to the theatre. Maude liked these persons;
I did not find them especially congenial. My life-long habit of
unwillingness to accept what life sent in its ordinary course was
asserting itself; but Maude took her friends as she found them, and I was
secretly annoyed by her lack of discrimination. In addition to this, the
sense of having been pulled up by the roots grew upon me.
"Suppose," Maude surprised me by suggesting one morning as we sat at
breakfast watching the river craft flit like phantoms through the
yellow-green fog--"suppose we don't go to France, after all, Hugh?"
"Not go to France!" I exclaimed. "Are you tired of the trip?"
"Oh, Hugh!" Her voice caught. "I could go on, always, if you were
content."
"And--what makes you think that I'm not content?"
Her smile had in it just a touch of wistfulness.
"I understand you, Hugh, better than you think. You want to get back to
your work, and--and I should be happier. I'm not so silly and so ignorant
as to think that I can satisfy you always. And I'd like to get settled at
home,--I really should."
There surged up within me a feeling of relief. I seized her hand as it
lay on the table.
"We'll come abroad another time, and go to France," I said. "Maude,
you're splendid!"
She shook her head.
"Oh, no, I'm not."
"You do satisfy me," I insisted. "It isn't that at all. But I think,
perhaps, it would be wiser to go back. It's rather a crucial time with
me, now that Mr. Watling's in Washington. I've just arrived at a position
where I shall be able to make a good deal of money, and later on--"
"It isn't the money, Hugh," she cried, with a vehemence which struck me
as a little odd. "I sometimes think we'd be a great deal happier
without--without all you are going to make."