Читать книгу Jericho's Daughters - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 32

Table of Contents

Again silence lengthened and grew. The library was cheerful and warm, with the books and the fire, but to Wistart the atmosphere seemed chilling. This once had been his mother’s study, in the days when she ruled the destinies of the Clarion; and all of Jericho, for that matter. After her death, when he and his wife took over the house, Mary Agnes had changed this one room very little. The mellow shelves of books from floor to ceiling, the furniture, even the table which his mother had used as a work desk, were full of memories to him, like shadows of former days.

His entire remembrance of his mother was that of a being superior to all others in her wisdom and justness. It was a picture perhaps slightly warped, since there can be no question that Mrs. Algeria Wedge, in her lifetime, had her human failings and weaknesses. Nevertheless, to her son, brought up under her dominion, which was fond but nonetheless complete, she represented Infallibility. Though at times it was irksome, he gave up rebellion quite early in life and accepted Infallibility as an unconscious source of security.

Not until it was gone did Wistart know how much he depended on his mother’s strength. With a habit of self-deprecation which somehow had become a part of his nature, he compared himself to his mother, and the comparison was discouraging. To a man with pride it might have been humiliating, but Wistart did not have pride so much as resignation.

The realization did come when suddenly one day she was dead and he found himself with the protecting Infallibility shorn away from him. At that time he and Mary Agnes had been married three years, and from almost the very first day they had known how little suited they were for each other.

Mary Agnes was clever, polished, sophisticated, and lean. She made no secret of her derision at his plumpness and slow awkwardness, and he came to accept her scornful little cruelties as a matter of course; even when their acquaintances sometimes noticed and were amused by them. It was generally supposed by people that Wistart was too obtuse to understand, really, his wife’s continual malice. But he did understand well enough; he could feel pain and resentment too, although he took refuge in his reputation for stolidity and showed nothing of it in his face or manner.

He was sure his wife hated him. Sometimes he hated Mary Agnes, hated her bitter tongue, her eyes which seemed to probe his most secret thoughts, her leanness and hardness, her arrogance; and there were times when he dreamed secretly of freedom from her and wished she would walk out on him, leave him alone. But thus far, though they had been married ten years, neither of them had made a move toward separation, at least legally and openly, because they both had need to subscribe to the mores of Jericho in order to make up for their own shortcomings and previous violations of Jericho social codes.

In the final analysis, Wistart’s feeling toward Mary Agnes was more fear than hatred. At this present moment he was in an agony, combined of terror and practical certainty of failure in what he hoped for from her. He had to ask a favor of Mary Agnes: something so important that his whole life seemed to hang on it. And he could not remember ever having asked of her anything, however trivial, which she had granted easily, if at all. He wondered how, this morning, he could possibly bring the matter up, particularly since, very obviously, her humor was bad.