2. CHAPTER II.
AN EXPLOSION.
IT was settled that August was to be quietly
discharged at the end of his month, which was
Saturday night. Neither he nor Julia must suspect
any opposition to their attachment, nor any discovery
of it, indeed. This was settled by Mrs. Anderson.
She usually settled things. First, she settled upon the course
to be pursued. Then she settled her husband. He always made
a show of resistance. His dignity required a show of resistance.
But it was only a show. He always meant to surrender in the
end. Whenever his wife ceased her fire of small-arms and herself
hung out the flag of truce, he instantly capitulated. As in
every other dispute, so in this one about the discharge of the
“miserable, impudent Dutchman,” Mrs. Anderson attacked her
husband at all his weak points, and she had learned by heart a
catalogue of his weak points. Then, when he was sufficiently
galled to be entirely miserable; when she had expressed her
regret that she hadn't married somebody with some heart,
and that she had ever left her father's house, for her father was
always good to her; and when she had sufficiently reminded
him of the lover she had given up for him, and of how much
he had loved her, and how miserable she had made him by
loving Samuel Anderson—when she had conducted the quarrel
through all the preliminary stages, she always carried her point
in the end by a
coup de partie somewhat in this fashion:
“That's just the way! Always the way with you men!
I suppose I must give up to you as usual. You've lorded it
over me from the start. I can't even have the management of
my own daughter. But I do think that after I've let you have
your way in so many things, you might turn off that fellow.
You might let me have my way in one little thing, and you would
if you cared for me. You know how liable I am to die at any
moment of heart-disease, and yet you will prolong this excitement
in this way.”
Now, there is nothing a weak man likes so much as to be
considered strong, nothing a henpecked man likes so much
as to be regarded a tyrant. If you ever hear a man boast of
his determination to rule his own house, you may feel sure
that he is subdued. And a henpecked husband always makes
a great show of opposing everything that looks toward the enlargement
of the work or privileges of women. Such a man
insists on the shadow of authority because he can not have
the substance. It is a great satisfaction to him that his wife
can never be president, and that she can not make speeches
in prayer-meeting. While he retains these badges of superiority,
he is still in some sense head of the family.
So when Mrs. Anderson loyally reminded her husband that
she had always let him have his own way, he believed her
because he wanted to, though he could not just at the moment
recall the particular instances. And knowing that he must yield,
he rather liked to yield as an act of sovereign grace to the poor
oppressed wife who begged it.
“Well, if you insist on it, of course, I will not refuse you,”
he said; “and perhaps you are right.” He had yielded in this
way almost every day of his married life, and in this way he
yielded to the demand that August should be discharged. But
he agreed with his wife that Julia should not know anything
about it, and that there must be no leave-taking allowed.
The very next day Julia sat sewing on the long porch in
front of the house. Cynthy Ann was getting dinner in the
kitchen at the other end of the hall, and Mrs. Anderson was
busy in her usual battle with dirt. She kept the house clean,
because it gratified her combativeness and her domineering disposition
to have the house clean in spite of the ever-encroaching
dirt. And so she scrubbed and scolded, and scolded and
scrubbed, the scrubbing and scolding agreeing in time and
rhythm. The scolding was the vocal music, the scrubbing an
accompaniment. The concordant discord was perfect. Just at
the moment I speak of there was a lull in her scolding. The
symphonious scrubbing went on as usual. Julia, wishing to
divert the next thunder-storm from herself, erected what she
imagined might prove a conversational lightning-rod, by asking
a question on a topic foreign to the theme of the last march
her mother had played and sung so sweetly with brush and
voice.
“Mother, what makes Uncle Andrew so queer?”
“I don't know. He was always queer.” This was spoken
in a staccato, snapping-turtle way. But when one has lived
all one's life with a snapping-turtle, one doesn't mind. Julia did
not mind. She was curious to know what was the matter with
her uncle, Andrew Anderson. So she said:
“I've heard that some false woman treated him cruelly; is
that so?”
Julia did not see how red her mother's face was, for she
was not regarding her.
“Who told you that?” Julia was so used to hearing her
mother speak in an excited way that she hardly noticed the
strange tremor in this question.
“August.”
The symphony ceased in a moment. The scrubbing-brush
dropped in the pail of soapsuds. But the vocal storm burst
forth with a violence that startled even Julia. “August said
that, did he? And you listened, did you? You listened to
that? You listened to that? You listened to that? Hey? He
standered your mother. You listened to him slander your
mother!” By this time Mrs. Anderson was at white heat. Julia
was speechless. “I saw you yesterday flirting with that Dutchman,
and listening to his abuse of your mother! And now you
insult me! Well, to-morrow will be the last day that that
Dutchman will hold a plow on this place. And you'd better
look out for yourself, miss! You—”
Here followed a volley of epithets which Julia received
standing. But when her mother's voice grew to a scream,
Julia took the word.
“Mother, hush!”
It was the first word of resistance she had ever uttered.
The agony within must have been terrible to have wrung it
from her. The mother was stunned with anger and astonishment.
She could not recover herself enough to speak until Jule
had fled half-way up the stairs. Then her mother covered her
defeat by screaming after her, “Go to your own room, you impudent
hussy! You know I am liable to die of heart-disease any
minute, and you want to kill me!”
