University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.
COMING TO A CRISIS.

RICHARD was not happy in his new home; it did
not fit him like the old. He missed his mother's
petting; he missed the society of his plain, outspoken
brothers; he missed his freedom from restraint,
and he missed the deference so universally paid to him in
Olney, where he was the only lion. In Camden there were
many to divide the honors with him; and though he was
perhaps unconscious of it, he had been first so long that to
be one of many firsts was not altogether agreeable. With
the new home and new associates more like those to which
she had been accustomed, Ethelyn had resumed her training
process, which was not now borne as patiently as in the
halcyon days of the honeymoon, when most things wore
the couleur de rose and were right because they came from
the pretty young bride. Richard chafed under the criticisms
to which he was so frequently subjected, and if he
improved upon them in the least it was not perceptible to
Ethelyn, who had just cause to blush for the careless habits
of her husband,—habits which even Molinda observed
when in August she spent a week with Ethelyn, and then
formed one of a party which went for a pleasure-trip to
St. Paul's and Minnehana. From this excursion, which
lasted for two weeks, Richard returned to Camden in anything
but an amiable frame of mind. Ethelyn had not
pleased him at all, notwithstanding that she had been
unquestionably the reigning belle of the party,—the one

whose hand was claimed in every dance, and whose company
was sought in every ride and picnic. Marcia Fenton
and Ella Backus faded into nothingness when she was near,
and they laughingly complained to Richard that his wife
had stolen all their beaux away, and they wished he would
make her do better.

“I wish I could,” was his reply, spoken not playfully,
but moodily, just as he felt at the time.

He was not an adept in concealing his feelings, which
generally showed themselves upon his face, or were betrayed
in the tones of his voice; and when he spoke as he
did of his wife the two young girls glanced curiously at
each other, wondering if it were possible that the grave
Judge was jealous. If charged with jealousy Richard
would have denied it, though he did not care to have
Ethelyn so much in Harry Clifford's society. Richard
knew nothing definite against Harry, except that he would
occasionally drink more than was wholly in accordance
with a steady and safe locomotion of his body; and once
it had been said at Hal's boarding-house that the young
lawyer was invisible for three entire days. “Sick with a
cold,” was his excuse when he appeared again at table, with
haggard face and bloodshot eyes; but in the parlor, and
halls, and private rooms, there were whispers of soiled
clothes and jammed hats, and servants bribed to keep the
secret that young lawyer Clifford's boots were carried dangling
up to No. 94 at a very late hour of the night on which
he professed to have taken his cold. After this, pretty
Marcia Fenton, who, before Ethelyn came to town, had
ridden oftenest after the black horses owned by Harry,
tossed her curls when he came near, and arched her eyebrows
in a manner rather distasteful to the young man;

while Ella Backus turned her back upon him, and in his
hearing gave frequent lectures on intemperance and its
loathsomeness. Ethelyn, on the contrary, made no difference
in her demeanor toward him. She cared nothing for
him either way, except that his polite attentions and delicate
deference to her tastes and opinions were complimentary
and flattering, and she saw no reason why she should
shun him because he had fallen once. It might make him
worse, and she should stand by him as an act of philanthropy,
she said to Richard when he asked what she saw
to admire in that drunken Clifford.

Richard had no idea that Ethelyn cared in the least for
Harry Clifford; he knew she did not, though she sometimes
singled him out as one whose manners in society her
husband would do well to imitate. Of the two young
men, Harry Clifford and Frank Van Buren, who had
been suggested to him as copies, Richard preferred the
former, and wished he could feel as easy with regard
to Frank as he was with regard to Harry. He had
never forgotten that fragment of conversation overheard
in Washington, and as time went on it haunted him
more and more. He had given up hoping for any confession
from Ethelyn, though at first he was constantly
expecting it, and laying little snares by way of hints and
reminders; but Ethelyn had evidently changed her mind,
and if there was a past which Richard ought to have known,
he would now probably remain in ignorance of it, unless
some chance revealed it. It would have been far better
if Richard had tried to banish all thoughts of Frank
Van Buren from his mind, and taken Ethelyn as he
found her; but Richard was a man, and so, manlike, he
hugged the skeleton which in part he had dragged into his

home, and petted it, and kept it constantly in sight, instead
of thrusting it out from the chamber of his heart, and barring
the door against it. Frank's name was never mentioned
between him and Ethelyn, but Richard fancied that always
after the receipt of Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's letters Ethelyn
was a little sad, and more disposed to find fault with him,
and he sometimes wished Mrs. Dr. Van Buren might
never write to them again. There was one of her letters
awaiting Ethelyn on her return from Minnesota, and she
read it standing under the chandelier, with Richard lying
upon the couch near by, and watching her curiously.
There was something in the letter which disturbed her
evidently, for her face flushed, and her lips shut firmly together,
as they usually did when she was agitated. Richard
always read Aunt Barbara's letters, and heretofore he had
been welcome to Mrs. Van Buren's, a privilege of which
he seldom availed himself, for he found nothing interesting
in her talk of parties, and operas, and fashions, and the last
new color of dress-goods, and style of wearing the hair.

“It was too much twaddle for him,” he had once said
in reply to Ethelyn's question as to whether he would like
to see what Aunt Van Buren had written.

Now, however, she did not offer to show him the letter,
but crumpled it nervously in her pocket, and going to her
piano, began to play dashingly, rapidly, as was her custom
when excited. She did not know that Richard was listening
to her, much less watching her, as he lay in the shadow,
wondering what that letter contained, and wishing that he
knew. Ethelyn was tired that night, and after the first
heat of her excitement had been thrown off in a spirited
Schottish, she closed her piano, and coming to the couch
where Richard was lying, sat down by his side, and after

waiting a moment in silence, asked “of what he was thinking?”

There was something peculiar in the tone of her voice,—
something almost beseeching, as if she either wanted sympathy,
or encouragement for the performance of some good
act. But Richard did not so understand her. He was, to
tell the truth, a very little cross, as men, and women too,
are apt to be when tired with sight-seeing and dissipation.
He had been away from his business three whole weeks,
travelling with a party for not one member of which, with
the exception of his wife, Melinda, Marcia, and Ella, did he
care a straw.

Hotel life at St. Paul's he regarded as a bore, second only
to life at Saratoga. The falls of Minnehaha “was a very
pretty little stream,” he thought, but what people could
see about it to go into such ecstacies as Ethelyn, and even
Melinda did, he could not tell. Perhaps if Harry Clifford
had not formed a part of every scene where Ethelyn was
the prominent figure, he might have judged differently.
But Harry had been greatly in his way, and Richard did
not like it any more than he liked Ethelyn's flirting so much
with him, and leaving him, her husband, to look about for
himself. He had shown, too, that he did not like it to
Marcia Fenton and Ella Backus, who probably thought
him a bear, as perhaps he was. On the whole, Richard
was very uncomfortable in his mind, and Aunt Van Buren's
letter did not tend in the least to improve his temper; so
when Ethelyn asked of what he was thinking, and accompanied
her question with a stroke of her hand upon his
hair, he answered her, “Nothing much, except that I am
tired and sleepy.”

The touch upon his hair he had felt to his finger-tips, for

Ethelyn seldom caressed him even as much as this; but
he was in too moody a frame of mind to respond as he
would once have done. His manner was not very encouraging,
but, as if she had nerved herself to some painful duty,
Ethelyn persisted, and said to him next, “You have not seen
Aunt Van Buren's letter. Shall I read you what she says?”

Every nerve in Richard's body had been quivering with
curiosity to see that letter, but now, when the coveted privilege
was within his reach, he refused it; and, little dreaming
of all he was throwing aside, answered indifferently,
“No, I don't know that I care to hear it. I hardly think
it will pay. Where are they now?”

“At Saratoga,” Ethelyn replied; but her voice was not
the same which had addressed Richard first; there was a
coldness, a constraint in it now, as if her good resolution had
been thrown back upon her and frozen up the impulse
prompting her to the right.

Richard had had his chance with Ethelyn and lost it.
But he did not know it, or guess how sorry and disappointed
she was when at last she left him and retired to
her sleeping-room. There was a window open in the parlor,
and as the wind was rising with a sound of rain,
Richard went to close it ere following his wife. The window
was near to the piano, and as he shut it something
rattled at his feet. It was the crumpled letter, which Ethelyn
had accidentally drawn from her dress-pocket with the
handkerchief she held in her hand when she sat down by
Richard. He knew it was the letter, and his first thought
was to carry it to Ethelyn; then, as he remembered her
offer to read it to him, he said, “Surely there can be no
harm in reading it for myself. A man has a right to know
what is in a letter to his wife.”

Thus reasoning, he sat down by the side light as far
away from the bed-room door as possible, and commenced
Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's letter. They were stopping at the
United States, and there was nothing particular at first,
except her usual remarks of the people and what they
wore; but on the third page Richard's eye caught Frank's
name, and skipping all else, leaped eagerly forward to what
the writer was saying of her son. His conduct evidently
did not please his mother; neither did the conduct of
Nettie, who was too insipid for anything, the lady wrote,
adding that she was not half so bright and pretty as when she
was first married, but had the headache and kept her own
room most of the time, and was looking so faded and worn
that Frank was really ashamed of her.

“You know how much he likes brilliant, sparkling girls,”
she wrote, “and of course he has no patience with Nettie's
fancied ailments. I can't say that I altogether sympathize
with her myself; and, dear Ethie, I must acknowledge that
it has more than once occurred to me that I did very wrong
to meddle with Frank's first love affair. He would be far
happier now if it had been suffered to go on, for I suspect
he has never entirely gotten over it; but it is too late now
for regrets. Nettie is his wife, and we must make the best
of it.”

Then followed what seemed the secret of the Van Buren
discomfort. The bank in which most of Nettie's fortune
was deposited had failed, leaving her with only the scanty
income of five hundred dollars a year, a sum not sufficient
to buy clothes, Mrs. Van Buren said. But Richard did not
notice this,—his mind was only intent upon Frank's first
love affair, which ought to have gone on. He did not ask
himself whether, in case it had gone on, Ethelyn would

have been there, so near to him that her soft breathing
came distinctly to his ear. He knew she would not; there
had been something between her and Frank Buren, he was
convinced beyond a doubt; and the fiercest pang he had
ever known was that which came to him when he sat with
Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's letter in his hand, wondering why
Ethie had withheld the knowledge of it from him, and if
she had outlived the love which her aunt regretted as
having come to naught. Then, as the more generous part
of his nature began to seek for excuses for her, he asked
himself why she offered to read the letter if she had really
been concerned in Frank's first love affair, and hope whispered
that possibly she was not the heroine of that romance.
There was comfort in that thought; and Richard
would have been comforted if jealousy had not suggested
how easy it was for her to skip the part relating to Nettie
and Frank, and thus leave him as much in the dark as ever.
Yes, that was undoubtedly her intention. While seeming
to be so open and honest, she would have deceived him all
the more. This was what Richard decided, and his heart
grew very hard against the young wife, who looked so innocent
and pretty in her quiet sleep, when at last he sought
his pillow and lay down by her side.

He was very moody and silent for days after that, and
even his clients detected an irritability in his manner which
they had never seen before. “There was nothing ailed
him,” he said to Ethelyn, when she asked what was the
matter, and accused him of being cross. She was very
gay; Camden society suited her; and as the season advanced,
and the festivities grew more and more frequent,
she was seldom at home more than one or two evenings in
the week, while the day was given either to the arrangement

of dress or taking of necessary rest, so that her husband saw
comparatively little of her, except for the moment, when she
always came to him with hood and white cloak in hand
to ask him how she looked, before going to the carriage
waiting at the door. Never in her girlish days had she
been so beautiful as she was now; but Richard seldom told
her so, though he felt the magic influence of her beauty,
and did not wonder that she was the reigning belle. He
did not often accompany her himself. Parties, and receptions,
and concerts, were bores, he said; and at first he
had raised objections to her going without him. But after
motherly Mrs. Harris, who boarded in the next block, and
was never happier than when chaperoning some one, offered
to take her under the same wing which had sheltered
six fine and now well-married daughters, Richard made no
further objections. He did not wish to be thought a domestic
tyrant; he did not wish to seem jealous, and so he
would wrap Ethie's cloak around her, and taking her himself
to Mrs. Harris' carriage, would give that lady sundry charges
concerning her, bidding her see that she did not dance till
wholly wearied out, and asking her to bring her home earlier
than the previous night. Then, returning to his solitary
rooms, he would sit nursing the demon which might
so easily have been thrust aside. Ethie was not insensible
to his kindness in allowing her to follow the bent of her
own inclinations, even when it was so contrary to his own,
and for his sake she did many things she might not otherwise
have done. She snubbed Harry Clifford and the
whole set of dandies like him, so that, though they danced,
and talked, and laughed with her, they never crossed a
certain line of propriety which she had drawn between
them. She was very circumspect, and tried at first in
various ways to atone to Richard for her long absence
from him, by telling him whatever she thought would interest
him; and sometimes, when she found him waiting
for her, and looking so tired and sleepy, she would playfully
chide him for sitting up for her, and tell him that
though it was kind in him to do so, she preferred that he
should not. This was early in the season; but after the
day when Mrs. Markham, senior, came over from Olney to
“blow Richard's wife up,” as she expressed it, everything
was changed, and Ethelyn stayed out as late as she
liked without any concessions to Richard. Mrs. Markham,
senior, had heard strange stories of Ethelyn's proceedings,
—“going to parties night after night, with her dress shamefully
low, and going to plays and concerts bareheaded, with
flowers and streamers in her hair, besides wearing a mask,
and pretending she was Queen Hortense.”

“A pretty critter to be,” Mrs. Markham had said to the
kind neighbor who had returned from Camden and was giving
her the particulars in full of Ethelyn's misdoings. “Yes,
a pretty critter to be! If I was goin' to turn myself into somebody
else, I'd take a decent woman. I wonder at Richard's
lettin' her; but, law! he is so blind and she so headstrong!”

And the good woman groaned over this proof of depravity
as she questioned her visitor further with regard to
Ethie's departures from duty.

“And he don't go with her much, you say,” she continued,
feeling more aggrieved than ever when, in reply to her question,
she heard that on the occasion of Ethie's personating
Hortense, Richard had also appeared as a knight of the
Sixteenth Century, and borne his part so well that Ethelyn
herself did not recognize him until the mask was removed.

Mrs. Markham could not suffer such high-handed wickedness

to go unrebuked, and taking as a peace-offering, in case
matters assumed a serious aspect, a pot of gooseberry-jam
and a ball of head-cheese, she started for Camden the very
next day.

Ethelyn did not expect her, but she received her kindly,
and knowing how she hated a public table, had dinner
served in her own room, and then, without showing the
least impatience, waited a full hour for Richard to come in
from the court-house, where an important suit was pending.
Mrs. Markham was to return to Olney that night, and
as soon as they were seated at the table, she brought the
conversation round to the “stories” she had heard, and
little by little laid on the lash till Ethelyn's temper was
roused, and she asked her mother-in-law to say out what
she had to say at once, and not skirt round it so long.
Then came the whole list of misdemeanors which Mrs.
Markham thought “perfectly ridiculous,” asking her son
how he “could put up with such work.”

Richard wisely forbore taking either side; nor was it
necessary that he should speak for Ethie. She was fully
competent to fight her own battle, and she fought it with
a will, telling her mother-in-law that she should attend
as many parties as she pleased and wear as many masks.
She did not give up her liberty of action when she married.
She was young yet, and should enjoy herself if she chose,
and in her own way.

This was all the satisfaction Mrs. Markham could get; and
supremely pitying “her poor boy,” whom she mentally
decided was “henpecked,” she took the cars back to Olney,
saying to Richard, who accompanied her to the train, “I
am sorry for you from the bottom of my heart. It would
be better if you had stayed with me.”

Richard liked his mother's good opinion, but as he
walked back to the hotel he could not help feeling that a
mother's interference between man and wife was never very
discreet, and he wished the good woman had stayed at
home. If he had said so to Ethelyn, when on his return
to his rooms he found her weeping passionately, there
might have come a better understanding between them, and
she probably would have stayed with him that evening instead
of attending the whist party given by Mrs. Miller.
But he had determined to keep silent, and when Ethelyn
asked if she was often to be subjected to such insults, he
did not reply. He went with her, however, to Mrs. Miller's,
and knowing nothing of cards, almost fell asleep while
waiting for her and playing backgammon with another fellow-sufferer,
who had married a young wife and was there
on duty.

Mrs. Markham, senior, did not go to Camden again; and
when Christmas came, and with it an invitation for Richard
and his wife to dine at the farm-house on the turkey Andy
had fattened for the occasion, Ethelyn peremptorily declined;
and as Richard would not go without her, Mrs.
Jones and Melinda had their seats at table, and Mrs. Markham
wished for the hundredth time that Richard's preference
had fallen on the latter young lady instead of “that
headstrong piece who would be his ruin.”