13. CHAPTER XIII.
GOING TO WASHINGTON.
RICHARD'S trunk was ready for Washington. His
twelve shirts, which Eunice had ironed so nicely,
were packed away, with his collars and new yarn
socks, and his wedding-suit, which he was carrying as a
mere matter of form, for he knew he should not need it
during his three months' absence. He should not go into
society, he thought, or even attend levees, with his heart
as sore and heavy as it was during his last days at home.
Ethelyn was not going with him. She knew it now, and
never did face of a six-months' wife look harder or stonier
than hers as she stayed in her room, paying no heed whatever
to Richard, and leaving entirely to Eunice and her
mother-in-law those little things which most wives would
have been delighted to do for their husband's comfort.
Ethelyn was very unhappy, very angry, and very bitterly
disappointed. The fact that she was not going to Washington
had fallen upon her like a thunderbolt, paralyzing
her, as it were, so that after the first great shock was over
she seemed like some benumbed creature bereft of care, or
feeling, or interest in anything.
She had remained in Camden the most of the day following
Mrs. Judge Miller's party, and had done a little
shopping with Marcia Fenton and Ella Backus, to both of
whom she spoke of her winter in Washington as a matter
of course, saying what she had to say in Richard's presence,
and never dreaming that he was only waiting for a fitting
opportunity to demolish her castles entirely. If Ethelyn
had talked Washington openly to her husband when she
was first married, and before his mother had gained his
ear, her chances for a winter at the Capital would have
been far greater than they were now. But she had taken
it for granted that she was going, and supposed that
Richard understood it just as she did. She had asked
him several times where he intended to board, and why
he did not secure rooms at Willard's, but Richard's noncommittal
replies had given her no cue to her impending
fate. On the night of her return from Camden, as she
stood by her dressing-burean, folding away her point-lace
handkerchief, she had casually remarked, “I shall not use
this again till I use it in Washington. Will it be very
gay there this winter?”
Richard was leaning his elbow upon the mantel, looking
thoughtfully into the fire, and for a moment he did not
answer. He hated to demolish Ethie's castles, but it could
not be helped; so he said at last, “Put down your finery,
Ethelyn, and come stand by me while I say something to
you.”
His voice and manner startled Ethelyn, but did not prepare
her for what followed after she had “dropped her
finery,” and was standing by her husband.
“Ethelyn,” he began, and his eyes did not move from
the blazing fire, “it is time we came to an understanding
about Washington. I have talked with mother, whose
age certainly entitles her opinion to some consideration,
and she thinks with me that it will be far better for you
to remain quietly at home this winter, where she can care
for you, and see that you are not at all imprudent. It
would break my heart if anything should happen to my
darling.”
He was looking at Ethelyn now, and the expression of
her face startled and terrified him, it was so strange and
terrible.
“Not go to Washington!” and her lips quivered with
passion, while her eyes burned like coals of fire. “I stay
here all this long, dreary winter with your mother! Never,
Richard, never! I'll die before I'll do that. It is all—”
she did not finish the sentence, for she would not say, “It
is all I married you for;” she was too much afraid of
Richard for that, and so she hesitated, but looked at him
intently to see if he was in earnest.
She knew he was at last,—knew that neither tears, nor
reproaches, nor bitter scorn could avail to carry her point,
for she tried them all, even to violent histerics, which
brought Mrs. Markham, senior, into the field and made the
matter ten times worse. Had she stayed away, Richard
might have yielded, for he was frightened at the storm he
had provoked; but Richard was passive in his mother's
hand, and listened complacently while in stronger, plainer
language than he had used she repeated in substance all he
had said about the impropriety of Ethelyn's mingling with
the gay throng at Washington. And while she talked
poor Ethelyn lay upon the lounge, writhing with pain and
passion, wishing that she could die, and feeling in her
heart that she hated the entire Markham race, from Richard
down to innocent Andy, who heard of the quarrel going
on between his brother and Ethelyn, and crept cautiously
to the door of their room, wishing that he could mediate
between them.
But this was a matter beyond Andy's ken. He could not
even find a petition in his Prayer-Book suited to that occasion.
Mr. Townsend had assured him that it would meet
every emergency; but for once Mr. Townsend was at fault,
—for with the sound of Ethelyn's angry voice ringing in his
ears, Andy lighted his tallow candle, and creeping up to his
chamber knelt down by his wooden chair and sought
among the general prayers for one suited “to a man and
his wife quarrelling.” There was a prayer for the President,
a prayer for the clergy, a prayer for Congress, a prayer
for rain, a prayer for the sick, a prayer for people going
to sea, and people going to be hung,—but there was nothing
for the point at issue, unless he took the prayer to be used
in time of war and tumults, and this he thought would
never answer, inasmuch as he did not really know who was
the enemy from which he would be delivered. It was
hard to decide against Ethelyn and still harder to decide
against “Dick,” and so with his brains all in a muddle
Andy concluded to take the prayer “for all sorts and conditions
of men,” speaking very low and earnestly when he
asked that all “who were distressed in mind, body, or
estate, might be comforted and relieved according to
their several necessities.” This surely covered the ground
to a very considerable extent; or if it did not, the fervent
“Good Lord, deliver us,” with which Andy finished his
devotions, did; and the simple-hearted, trusting man arose
from his knees comforted and relieved, even if Richard and
Ethelyn were not.
With them the trouble continued, for Ethelyn kept her
bed next day, refusing to see any one, and only answering
Richard in monosyllables when he addressed himself directly
to her. Once he bent over her and said, “Ethelyn,
tell me truly,—is it your desire to be with me, your dread
of separation from me, which makes you so averse to be
left behind?”
There was that in his voice which said that if this were
the case he might be induced to reconsider. But though
sorely tempted to do it, Ethelyn would not tell a falsehood
for the sake of Washington; so she made no reply, and
Richard drew from her silence any inference he pleased.
He was very wretched those last days, for he could not
forget the look of Ethelyn's eye or the sound of her voice
when, as she finally gave up the contest, she said to him,
with quivering nostrils and steady tones, “You may leave
me here, Richard, but remember this: not one line will I
write to you while you are gone. I mean what I say. I
shall keep my word.”
It would be dreadful not to hear directly from Ethie
during all the dreary winter, and Richard hoped she would
recall her words; but Ethelyn was too sorely wounded to
do that. She must reach Richard somehow, and this was
the way she would do it. She did not come down stairs
again after it was settled. She was sick, she said, and kept
her room, seeing no one but Richard and Eunice, who three
times a day brought up her nicely-cooked meals and looked
curiously at her as she deposited her tray upon the stand
and quietly left the room. Mrs. Markham did not go up
at all, for Ethelyn charged her disappointment directly to
her mother-in-law, and had asked that she be kept away;
and so, 'mid passion and tears and bitterness, the week
went by and brought the day when Richard was to leave.
