IN WHICH EUPHRASIA TAKES A HAND

Austen had not forgotten his promise to Euphrasia, and he had gone to Hanover Street many times since his sojourn at Mr. Jabe Jenney’s.  Usually these visits had taken place in the middle of the day, when Euphrasia, with gentle but determined insistence, had made him sit down before some morsel which she had prepared against his coming, and which he had not the heart to refuse.  In answer to his inquiries about Hilary, she would toss her head and reply, disdainfully, that he was as comfortable as he should be.  For Euphrasia had her own strict ideas of justice, and to her mind Hilary’s suffering was deserved.  That suffering was all the more terrible because it was silent, but Euphrasia was a stern woman.  To know that he missed Austen, to feel that Hilary was being justly punished for his treatment of her idol, for his callous neglect and lack of realization of the blessings of his life—­these were Euphrasia’s grim compensations.

At times, even, she had experienced a strange rejoicing that she had promised Austen to remain with his father, for thus it had been given her to be the daily witness of a retribution for which she had longed during many years.  Nor did she strive to hide her feelings.  Their intercourse, never voluminous, had shrunk to the barest necessities for the use of speech; but Hilary, ever since the night of his son’s departure, had read in the face of his housekeeper a knowledge of his suffering, an exultation a thousand times more maddening than the little reproaches of language would have been.  He avoided her more than ever, and must many times have regretted bitterly the fact that he had betrayed himself to her.  As for Euphrasia, she had no notion of disclosing Hilary’s torture to his son.  She was determined that the victory, when it came, should be Austen’s, and the surrender Hilary’s.

“He manages to eat his meals, and gets along as common,” she would reply.  “He only thinks of himself and that railroad.”

But Austen read between the lines.

“Poor old Judge,” he would answer; “it’s because he’s made that way, Phrasie.  He can’t help it, any more than I can help flinging law-books on the floor and running off to the country to have a good time.  You know as well as I do that he hasn’t had much joy out of life; that he’d like to be different, only he doesn’t know how.”

“I can’t see that it takes much knowledge to treat a wife and son like human beings,” Euphrasia retorted; “that’s only common humanity.  For a man that goes to meetin’ twice a week, you’d have thought he’d have learned something by this time out of the New Testament.  He’s prayed enough in his life, goodness knows!”

Now Euphrasia’s ordinarily sharp eyes were sharpened an hundred fold by affection; and of late, at odd moments during his visits, Austen had surprised them fixed on him with a penetration that troubled him.