He speaks with a deprecating humility, an almost imploring
gentleness, but I am so thoroughly upset by the astounding
change that has come over the tone of his talk—by
the clouds that have suddenly darkened the morning
sunshine of my horizon—that I cannot answer
him in the same tone.
“Perhaps we shall not have to spend all our
lives together!” I say, with a harsh laugh.
“Cheer up! One of us may die! who
knows?”
After that we neither of us say any thing till we
reach the house.
“Yea, by God’s rood, I trusted you too
well!”
In the hall we part without a word, and I, spiritlessly,
mount the staircase alone. How I flew down it
this morning, three steps at a time, and had some
ado to hinder myself from sliding down the banisters,
as we have all often, with dangerous joy, done at
home! Now I crawl up, like some sickly old person.
When I reach my bedroom, I throw myself into the first
chair, and lie in it—
“... quiet as any water-sodden log
Stayed in the wandering warble of a brook.”
I do not attempt to take off my hat and jacket.
Of what use is it to take them off more than to leave
them on, or to leave them on more than to take them
off? Of what use is any thing, pray?
What a weary round life is! what a silly circle of
unfortunate repetitions! eating only to be hungry
again; waking only to sleep; sleeping only to wake!
At first I am too inert even to think, even to lift
my hand to protect my cheek from Vick’s muddy
paws, who, annoyed at my evident inattention to her
presence, is sitting on my lap, making little impatient
clawings at my defenseless countenance.
But gradually on the river of recollection all the
incidents of the morning flow through my mind.
In more startling relief than ever, the astounding
change in Roger, wrought by those ill-starred two
hours, stands out. Is it possible that I may
have been attributing it to a wrong cause? Doubtless,
the first interview with the woman he had loved, and
who had thrown him over (by-the-by, how forgiving
men are!)—yes, the first, probably, since
they had stood in the relation of betrothed people
to each other—must have been full of pain.
Doubtless, the contrast between the crude gawkiness
of the raw girl he has drifted into marrying—for
I suppose it was more accident than any thing else—with
the mature and subtile grace, the fine and low-voiced
sweetness of the woman whom his whole heart and soul
and taste chose and approved, must have struck him
with keen force. I expected that:
it would not have taken me by surprise. If he
had emerged from among the laurestines, depressed,
and vainly struggling for a factitious cheerfulness,
I think I could have understood it. I think I
could have borne with it, could have tried meekly
to steal back into his heart again, to win him back,
in despite of ignorance, gawkiness, and all other
my drawbacks, by force of sheer love.
