He went out for a long walk, and she went to her room.
They lunched silently together in the presence of
their children, who knew that they had been quarrelling,
but were easily indifferent to the fact, as children
get to be in such cases; nature defends their youth,
and the unhappiness which they behold does not infect
them. In the evening, after the boy and girl
had gone to bed, the father and mother resumed their
talk. He would have liked to take it up at the
point from which it wandered into hostilities, for
he felt it lamentable that a matter which so seriously
concerned them should be confused in the fumes of senseless
anger; and he was willing to make a tacit acknowledgment
of his own error by recurring to the question, but
she would not be content with this, and he had to
concede explicitly to her weakness that she really
meant it when she had asked him to accept Fulkerson’s
offer. He said he knew that; and he began soberly
to talk over their prospects in the event of their
going to New York.
“Oh, I see you are going!” she twitted.
“I’m going to stay,” he answered,
“and let them turn me out of my agency here,”
and in this bitterness their talk ended.
V.
His wife made no attempt to renew their talk before
March went to his business in the morning, and they
parted in dry offence. Their experience was that
these things always came right of themselves at last,
and they usually let them. He knew that she had
really tried to consent to a thing that was repugnant
to her, and in his heart he gave her more credit for
the effort than he had allowed her openly. She
knew that she had made it with the reservation he
accused her of, and that he had a right to feel sore
at what she could not help. But he left her to
brood over his ingratitude, and she suffered him to
go heavy and unfriended to meet the chances of the
day. He said to himself that if she had assented
cordially to the conditions of Fulkerson’s offer,
he would have had the courage to take all the other
risks himself, and would have had the satisfaction
of resigning his place. As it was, he must wait
till he was removed; and he figured with bitter pleasure
the pain she would feel when he came home some day
and told her he had been supplanted, after it was too
late to close with Fulkerson.
He found a letter on his desk from the secretary,
“Dictated,” in typewriting, which briefly
informed him that Mr. Hubbell, the Inspector of Agencies,
would be in Boston on Wednesday, and would call at
his office during the forenoon. The letter was
not different in tone from many that he had formerly
received; but the visit announced was out of the usual
order, and March believed he read his fate in it.
During the eighteen years of his connection with it—first
as a subordinate in the Boston office, and finally
as its general agent there—he had seen a
good many changes in the Reciprocity; presidents,
Copyrights
Hazard of New Fortunes, a — Complete from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
