第41章

"What was it vexed you, dear? What is it you can't stand? Tell me.Iam your husband, I love you, I want to make you happy.""Why, you are having so many secrets that you keep from me; and you treat me as if I were only a child, consulting Martha about everything.And of late you seem to have forgotten that I am at the table and never help me to anything!""Secrets!" he re-echoed."What possible secrets can I have?""I don't know," I said, sinking wearily back on the sofa."Indeed, Ernest, I don't want to be selfish or exacting, but I am very unhappy.""Yes, I see it, poor child.And if I have neglected you at the table I do not wonder you are out of patience.I know how it has happened.

While you were pouring out the coffee I busied myself in caring for my father and Martha, and so forgot you.I do not give this as an excuse, but as a reason.I have really no excuse, and am ashamed of myself.""Don't say that, darling," I cried, "it is I who ought to be ashamed for making such an ado about a trifle.""It is not a trifle," he said; "and now to the other points.I dare say I have been careless about consulting Martha.But she has always been a sort of oracle in our family, and we all look up to her, and she is so much older than you.Then as to the secrets.Martha comes to my office to help me look over my books.I have been careless about my accounts, and she has kindly undertaken to attend to them for me.""Could not I have done that?"

"No; why should your little head be troubled about money matters? But to go on.I see that it was thoughtless in me not to tell you what we were about.But I am greatly perplexed and harassed in many ways.

Perhaps you would feel better to know all about it.I have only kept it from you to spare you all the anxiety I could.""Oh, Ernest," I said, "ought not a wife to share in all her husband's cares?""'No," he returned; "but I will tell you all that is annoying me now.

My father was in business in our native town, and went on prosperously for many years.Then the tide turned-he met with loss after loss, till nothing remained but the old homestead, and on that there was a mortgage.We concealed the state of things from my mother; her health was delicate, and we never let her know a trouble we could spare her.Now she has gone, and we have found it necessary to sell our old home and to divide and scatter the family My father's mental distress when he found others suffering from his own losses threw him into the state in which you see him now.I have therefore assumed his debts, and with God's help hope in time to pay them to the uttermost farthing.It will be necessary for us to live economically until this is done.There are two pressing cases that Iam trying to meet at once.This has given me a preoccupied air, Ihave no doubt, and made you suspect and misunderstand me.But now you know the whole, my darling."I felt my injustice and childish folly very keenly, and told him so.

"But I think, dear Ernest," I added, "if you will not be hurt at my saying so, that you have led me to it by not letting me share at once in your cares.If you had at the outset just told me the whole story, you would have enlisted my sympathies in your father's behalf, and in your own.I should have seen the reasonableness of your breaking up the old home and bringing him here, and it would have taken the edge of my bitter, bitter disappointment about my mother.""I feel very sorry about that," he said."It would be a real pleasure to have her here.But as things are now, she could not be happy with us.""There is no room," I put in.

"I am truly sorry.And now my dear little wife must have patience with her stupid blundering old husband, and we'll start together once more fair and square.Don't wait, next time, till you are so full that you boil over; the moment I annoy you by my inconsiderate ways, come right and tell me."I called myself all the horrid names I could think of.

"May I ask one thing more, now we are upon the subject?" I said at last."Why couldn't your sister Helen have come here instead of Martha?"He smiled a little.

"In the first place, Helen would be perfectly if she had the care of father in his present She is too young to have such responsibility.

In the second place, my brother John, with whom she has gone to live, has a wife who would be quite crushed by my father and Martha.She is one of those little tender, soft souls one could crush fingers.Now, you are not of that sort; you have force of character enough to enable you to live with them, while maintaining your own dignity and remaining yourself in spite of circum stances.""I thought you admired Martha above all thing and wanted me to be exactly like her.""I do admire her, but I do not want you to be like anybody but yourself.""But you nearly killed me by suggesting that I should take heed how Italked in your father's presence."

"Yes, dear; it was very stupid of me, but my father has a standard of excellence in his mind by which he tests every woman; this standard is my mother.She had none of your life and fun in her, and perhaps would not have appreciated your droll way of putting things any better than he and Martha do."I could not help sighing a little when I thought what sort of people were watching my every word.

"There is nothing amiss to my mind," Ernest continued, "in your gay talk; but my father has his own views as to what constitutes a religious character and cannot understand that real earnestness and real, genuine mirthfulness are consistent with each other."He had to go now, and we parted as if for a week's separation, this one talk had brought us so near to each other.I understand him now as I never have done, and feel that he has given me as real a proof of his affection by unlocking the door of his heart and letting me see its cares, as I give him in my wild pranks and caresses and foolish speeches.How truly noble it is in him to take up his father's burden in this way! I must contrive to help to lighten it.