Stepping Heavenward Part 18

"Yes, I see how it is," I cried, pa.s.sionately. "You and your father and your sister have got a box about a foot square that you want to squeeze me into. I have seen it ever since they came. And I can tell you it will take more than three of you to do it. There was no harm in what I said-none, whatever. If you only married me for the sake of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g me down and freezing me up, why didn't you tell me so before it was too late?"

Ernest stood looking at me like one staring at a problem he had got to solve, and didn't know where to begin.

"I am very sorry," he said. "I thought you would be glad to have me give you this little hint. Of course I want you to appear your very best before my father and sister."

"My very best is my real self," I cried. "To talk like a woman of forty is unnatural to a girl of my age. If your father doesn't like me I wish he would go away, and not come here putting notions into your head, and making you as cold and hard as a stone. Mother liked to have me 'run on,' as you call it, and I wish I had stayed with her all my life."

"Do you mean," he asked, very gravely," that you really wish that?"

"No," I said, "I don't mean it," for his husky, troubled voice brought me to my senses. "All I mean is, that I love you so dearly, and you keep my heart feeling so hungry and restless; and then you went and brought your father and sister here and never asked me if I should like it; and you crowded mother out, and she lives all alone, and it isn't right! I always said that whoever married me had got to marry mother, and I never dreamed that you would disappoint me so!"

"Will you stop crying, and listen to me?" he said.

But I could not stop. The floods of the great deep were broken up at last, and I had to cry. If I could have told my troubles to some one I could thus have found vent for them, but there was no one to whom I had a right to speak of my husband.

Ernest walked up and down in silence. Oh, if I could have cried on his breast, and felt that he loved and pitied me!

At last, as I grew quieter, he came and sat by me.

"This has come upon me like a thunderclap," he said. "I did not know I kept your heart hungry. I did not know you wished your mother to live with us. And I took it for granted that my wife, with her high-toned, heroic character, would sustain me in every duty, and welcome my father and sister to our home. I do not know what I can do now. Shall I send them away?"

No, no!" I cried. "Only be good to me, Ernest, only love me, only look at me with your own eyes, and not with other people's. You knew I had faults when you married me; I never tried to conceal them."

And did you fancy I had none myself?" he asked.

"No," I replied. "I saw no faults in you. Everybody said you were such a n.o.ble, good man and you spoke so beautifully one night at an evening meeting."

"Speaking beautifully is little to the purpose less one lives beautifully," he said, sadly. "And now is it possible that you and I, a Christian man and a Christian woman, are going on and on with scenes as this? Are you to wear your very life out because I have not your frantic way of loving, and am I to be made weary of mine because I cannot satisfy you?"

"But, Ernest," I said, "you used to satisfy me. Oh, how happy I was in those first days when we were always together; and you seemed so fond me!" I was down on the floor by this time, and looking up into his pale, anxious face.

"Dear child," he said, "I do love you, and that more than you know.

But you would not have me leave my work and spend my whole time telling you so?"

"You know I am not so silly," I cried.. "It is not fair, it is not right to talk as if I were. I ask for nothing unreasonable. I only want those little daily a.s.surances of your affection which I should suppose would be spontaneous if you felt at all towards me as I do to you."

"The fact is," he returned, "I am absorbed in my work. It brings many grave cares and anxieties. I spend most of my time amid scenes of suffering and at dying beds. This makes me seem abstracted and cold, but it does not make you less dear. On the contrary, the sense it gives me of the brevity and sorrowfulness of life makes you doubly precious, since it constantly reminds me that sick beds and dying beds must sooner or later come to our home as to those of others."

I clung to him as he uttered these terrible words In an agony of terror.

"Oh, Ernest, promise me, promise me that you will not die first," I pleaded.

Foolish little thing!" he said, and was as silly, for a while, as the silliest heart could ask. Then he became serious again.

"Katy," he said, "if you can once make up your mind to the fact that I am an undemonstrative man, not all fire and fury and ecstasy as you are, yet loving you with all my heart, however it may seem, I think you will spare yourself much needless pain--and spare me, also."

"But I want, you to be demonstrative," I persisted.

"Then you must teach me. And about my father and sister, perhaps, we may find some way of relieving you by and by. Meanwhile, try to bear with the trouble they make, for my sake."

"But I don't mind the trouble! Oh, Ernest, how you do misunderstand me! What I mind is their coming between you and me and making you love me less."

"By this time there was a call for Ernest-it is a wonder there had not been forty-and he went.

"I feel as heart-sore as ever. What has been gained by this tempest ?

Nothing at all! Poor Ernest! How can I worry him so when he is already full of care?

MARCH 20.-I have had such a truly beautiful letter to-day from dear mother! She gives up the hope of coming to spend her last years with us with a sweet patience that makes me cry whenever I think of it.

What is the secret of this instant and cheerful consent to whatever G.o.d wills! Oh, that I had it, too! She begs me to be considerate and kind to Ernest's father and sister, and constantly to remind myself that my Heavenly Father has chosen to give me this care and trial on the very threshold of my married life. I am afraid I have quite lost sight of that in my indignation with Ernest for bringing them here.

APRIL 3.-Martha is closeted with Ernest in his office day and night.

They never give me the least hint of what is going on in these secret meetings. Then this morning Sarah, my good, faithful cook, bounced into my room to give warning. She said she could not live where there were, two mistresses giving contrary directions.

"But, really, there is but one mistress," I urged. Then it came out that Martha went down every morning to look after the soap-fat, and to scrimp in the house-keeping, and see that there was no food wasted. I remembered then that she had inquired whether I attended to these details, evidently ranking such duties with saying one's prayers and reading one's Bible.

I flew to Ernest the moment he was at leisure and poured my grievances into his ear.

"Well, dear," he said, "suppose you give up the house-keeping to Martha! She will be far happier and you will be freed from much annoying, petty care."

I bit my tongue lest it should say something, and went back to Sarah.

"Suppose Miss Elliott takes charge of the housekeeping, and I have nothing to do with it, will you stay?"

"Indeed, and I won't then. I can't bear her, and I won't put up with her nasty, scrimping, pinching ways!"

"Very well. Then you will have to go," I said, with great dignity, though just ready to cry. Ernest, on being applied to for wages, undertook to argue the question himself.

"My sister will take the whole charge," he began.

"And may and welcome for all me!" quoth Sarah. "I don't like her and never shall."

"Your liking or disliking her is of no consequence whatever," said Ernest. "You may dislike her as much as you please. But you must not leave us."

"Indeed, and I'm not going to stay and be put upon by her," persisted Sarah. So she has gone. We had to get dinner ourselves; that is to say, Martha did, for she said I got in her way, and put her out with my awkwardness. I have been running hither and thither to find some angel who will consent to live in this ill-a.s.sorted household. Oh, how different everything is from what I had planned! I wanted a cheerful home, where I should be the centre of every joy; a home like Aunty's, without a cloud. But Ernest's father sits, the personification of silent gloom, like a nightmare on my spirits; Martha holds me in disfavor and contempt; Ernest is absorbed in his profession, and I hardly see him. If he wants advice he asks it of Martha, while I sit, humbled, degraded and ashamed, wondering why he ever married me at all. And then come interludes of wild joy when he appears just as he did in the happy days of our bridal trip, and I forget every grievance and hang on his words and looks like one intoxicated with bliss.

OCT. 2.-There has been another explosion. I held in as long as I could, and then flew into ten thousand pieces. Ernest had got into the habit of helping his father and sister at the table, and apparently forgetting me. It seems a little thing, but it chafed and fretted my already irritated soul till at last I was almost beside myself.

Yesterday they all three sat eating their breakfast and I, with empty plate, sat boiling over and, looking on, when Ernest brought things to a crisis by saying to Martha,

"If you can find time to-day I wish you would go out with me for half an hour or so. I want to consult you about-"

"Oh!" I said, rising, with my face all in a flame, do not trouble yourself to go out in order to escape me. I can leave the room and you can have your secrets to yourselves as you do your breakfast!"

I don't know which struck me, most, Ernest's appalled, grieved look or the glance exchanged between Martha and her father.

He did not hinder my leaving the room, and I went upstairs, as pitiable an object as could be seen. I heard him go to his office, then take his hat and set forth on his rounds. What wretched hours I pa.s.sed, thus left alone! One moment I reproached myself, the next I was indignant at the long series of offences that had led to this disgraceful scene.

At last Ernest came.