A Reconstructed Marriage. Amelia E. Barr

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СКАЧАТЬ the parlor door of their own apartments, but he did not enter with her. "I am going to leave you half-an-hour, Dora," he said. "I wish to smoke a cigar in the library."

      "I should like to go with you, Robert, as I have always done. I enjoy good tobacco."

      "Walking on some lovely balcony, overlooking the Mediterranean, it was pleasant; but here it is not the thing. If you went with me, I might have the whole family, as the library, like the dining-room, is common ground. Circumstances alter cases, Dora. You know that, my dear! I will return in half-an-hour."

      She had a slight struggle with herself to answer pleasantly, but that free and loving thing, the human soul, was in Theodora's case under kind but positive control, so she replied with a smile:

      "As you wish, dear Robert—yet I shall miss you."

      She was alone in her splendid rooms, and her heart fell. The day had been a hard one. From the moment they left Kendal, Robert had been disagreeably silent. He knew that he was going home to a struggle with his family, and he dreaded the experience. Had it been a struggle with business difficulties he would have risen bravely to its demands. A dispute with women irritated him. In his thoughts he called it "trivial." But had he known all that such a dispute generally involves, he would have sought out for it the most portentous and distracting word in all the languages of earth.

      So Theodora left to herself sat down with a sinking heart. The change in her husband's temper troubled her; the total absence of all human welcome to her new home troubled her still more. The occupation of her rooms by strangers, the rifling of her trunks, the half-quarrelsome dinner, the despotic changing of her name might be—as compared with death, accident, or ruin—"trivial" troubles, but she was poignantly wounded in her feelings by them. And their crowning grief was one she hardly dared to remember—her husband's failure to defend the name he had so often passionately sworn he loved better than all other names. True, she had permitted him to call her Dora, but that was a secret, sacred, pet name, to be used between themselves, and by that very understanding denied to all others.

      She could not but admit to herself that she was bitterly disappointed in her home-coming. She had thought Robert's mother and sisters would meet her on the threshold with kisses and words of welcome. She had yet to learn the paucity of kisses and tender words in a Scotch household. The fact is general, but the causes for this familiar repression are various, and may be either good or evil. Theodora felt them in her case to be altogether unkind. What could she do about it? There was the perilous luxury of complaint to her husband and there was her father's lifelong advice: "Shut up a trouble in your heart, and you will soon sing over it." Which course should she take? She was waiting for a true instinct, a clear, lawful perception, when Robert entered the room.

      She looked up with a smile that brought him swiftly to her side, and when he spoke kindly, all her fearing discontent slipped away. Very soon their conversation turned naturally to their apartments. Robert was proud of them, not so much for the money lavished on their adornment, as for the taste he thought himself to have shown. Going here and there in them, he happened to find, on a beautiful cabinet, an old curl paper and a couple of bent hairpins.

      "Look here, Dora," he said, and his voice was so full of displeasure, that she rose hastily and went to him.

      "What kind of maid have you hired? She ought to know better than to leave these things in your parlor."

      "And you ought to know better, Robert," was the indignant answer, "than to suppose these things belong to me. Do I ever put my hair in newspaper twists? Do I ever fasten it with dirty, rusty, wire pins like these?"

      "Then tell Ducie to keep her pins and curl papers in her own room."

      "They are not Ducie's. She would not put such dreadful things in her pretty hair."

      "How do they come here, then?"

      "I suppose the people who have been occupying these rooms left them."

      "No one has occupied these rooms since they were redecorated and refurnished."

      "You are mistaken, Robert. They have been fully occupied for the last three weeks."

      "Dora, what are you saying?"

      "The truth! Call any of your servants, and they will tell you so."

      Without further words he rang the bell, and Ducie appeared. "Ducie," he asked, "who told you there had been people staying in these rooms?"

      "The kitchen, sir; that is, the men and women in the kitchen. I was taken all aback, for my lady had told me——"

      "Do you know who the people were?"

      "Mrs. and Miss Crawford, Mrs. Laird and her granddaughter, Miss Greenhill."

      "Oh, they were relations, Dora," he said in a voice which indicated they had a right there, and that he was neither grieved nor astonished at their invasion of his apartments.

      "If you please, sir," interposed Ducie, "my lady's trunks were all opened by Mrs. Crawford and the rest. It gave me such a turn!"

      "The rest? Who do you mean?"

      "Miss Crawford, Mrs. Laird, and Miss Greenhill."

      "Then give the ladies their proper names."

      "Yes, sir, Mrs. and Miss Crawford, Mrs. Laird, and Miss Greenhill have opened and ransacked all the four trunks belonging to my lady, which were sent on here directly after her marriage. She had given me the keys of them, and when I saw them open it fairly took my breath away. I am afraid many things are destroyed, and some things that cost no end of money stolen. Not liking to be blamed for the same, I wish the matter looked into."

      "Stolen! You should be careful how you use such a word."

      "Sir, excuse me, but people who open locked trunks, and use and destroy what is not theirs are just as likely as not to carry off what they want. My character is in danger, sir. I wish the trunks examined."

      "I suppose you have been through them."

      "No, indeed, sir. When my lady went to her dinner, I called in one of the kitchen girls. I wanted a witness that I had never touched them."

      "How dare you make such charges, then?"

      "Ask my lady."

      "Dora, is there any truth in this girl's words?"

      "I fear she speaks too truly, Robert. I have only looked cursorily through one trunk, but I found much fine clothing spoiled, and I fear some jewelry gone. The ruby and sapphire ring given me by my college history class as a wedding gift is not in the jewel case it was packed in, and my turquoise necklace was scattered among my neckwear. It ought to have been in the jewel box."

      "Perhaps you forgot in the hurry of packing where you put it."

      "I was not hurried. Those four trunks were all leisurely and carefully packed, and the day we left Kendal for Paris——"

      "You mean our wedding-day?"

      "Yes."

      "Then why do you avoid saying so!"

      "I do not, but on that same day these four trunks were forwarded here. СКАЧАТЬ