第20章 VI.(1)

Kenton was so unhappy that he could not wait for his wife to come to him in their own room; he broke in upon her and Ellen in the parlor, and at his coming the girl flitted out, in the noiseless fashion which of late had made her father feel something ghostlike in her. He was afraid she was growing to dislike him, and trying to avoid him, and now he presented himself quite humbly before his wife, as if he had done wrong in coming.

He began with a sort of apology for interrupting, but his wife said it was all right, and she added, "We were not talking about anything in particular." She was silent, and then she added again: "Sometimes Ithink Ellen hasn't very fine perceptions, after all. She doesn't seem to feel about people as I supposed she would.""You mean that she doesn't feel as you would suppose about those people?"Mrs. Kenton answered, obliquely. "She thinks it's a beautiful thing in him to be so devoted to his mother.""Humph! And what does she think of his mother?""She thinks she has very pretty hair."

Mrs. Kenton looked gravely down at the work she had in her hands, and Kenton did not know what to make of it all. He decided that his wife must feel, as he did, a doubt of the child's sincerity, with sense of her evasiveness more tolerant than his own. Yet he knew that if it came to a question of forcing Ellen to do what was best for her, or forbidding her to do what was worst, his wife would have all the strength for the work, and he none. He asked her, hopelessly enough, "Do you think she still cares for him?""I think she wishes to give him another trial; I hope she will." Kenton was daunted, and he showed it. "She has got to convince herself, and we have got to let her. She believes, of course, that he's here on her account, and that flatters her. Why should she be so different from other girls?" Mrs. Kenton demanded of the angry protest in her husband's eye.

His spirit fell, and he said, "I only wish she were more like them.""Well, then, she is just as headstrong and as silly, when it comes to a thing like this. Our only hope is to let her have her own way.""Do you suppose he cares for her, after all?"Mrs. Kenton was silent, as if in exhaustive self-question. Then she answered: "No, I don't in that way. But he believes he can get her.""Then, Sarah, I think we have a duty to the poor child. You must tell her what you have told me."Mrs. Kenton smiled rather bitterly, in recognition of the fact that the performance of their common duty must fall wholly to her. But she merely said: "There is no need of my telling her. She knows it already.""And she would take him in spite of knowing that he didn't really care for her?""I don't say that. She wouldn't own it to herself.""And what are you going to do?"

"Nothing. We must let things take their course."They had a great deal more talk that came to the same end. They played their sad comedy, he in the part of a father determined to save his child from herself, and she in hers of resisting and withholding him. It ended as it had so often ended before--he yielded, with more faith in her wisdom than she had herself.

At luncheon the Bittridges could not join the Kentons, or be asked to do so, because the table held only four, but they stopped on their way to their own table, the mother to bridle and toss in affected reluctance, while the son bragged how he had got the last two tickets to be had that night for the theatre where he was going to take his mother. He seemed to think that the fact had a special claim on the judge's interest, and she to wish to find out whether Mrs. Kenton approved of theatre-going.

She said she would not think of going in Ballardsville, but she supposed it was more rulable in New York.

During the afternoon she called at the Kenton apartment to consult the ladies about what she ought to wear. She said she had nothing but a black 'barege' along, and would that do with the hat she had on? She had worn it to let them see, and now she turned her face from aide to side to give them the effect of the plumes, that fell like a dishevelled feather-duster round and over the crown. Mrs. Kenton could only say that it would do, but she believed that it was the custom now for ladies to take their hats off in the theatre.

Mrs. Bittridge gave a hoarse laugh. "Oh, dear! Then I'll have to fix my hair two ways? I don't know what Clarence WILL say."The mention of her son's name opened the way for her to talk of him in relation to herself, and the rest of her stay passed in the celebration of his filial virtues, which had been manifest from the earliest period.

She could not remember that she ever had to hit the child a lick, she said, or that he had ever made her shed a tear.

When she went, Boyne gloomily inquired, "What makes her hair so much darker at the roots than it is at the points?" and his mother snubbed him promptly.

"You had no business to be here, Boyne. I don't like boys hanging about where ladies are talking together, and listening."This did not prevent Lottie from answering, directly for Boyne, and indirectly for Ellen, "It's because it's begun to grow since the last bleach."It was easier to grapple with Boyne than with Lottie,,and Mrs. Kenton was willing to allow her to leave the room with her brother unrebuked.

She was even willing to have had the veil lifted from Mrs. Bittridge's hair with a rude hand, if it world help Ellen.