National Avenue by Booth Tarkington (book recommendations website .txt) 📕

mockery was openly acrid. “It wouldn’t look cordial and naturally you’d hate to have her think you lacked cordiality⁠—a woman you were so cordial with you wanted your child to grow up to be like her instead of like its mother!⁠—a woman you were so cordial with you had to hold her hand the very day you brought your bride home! It would be terrible to have her think⁠—”

But here Dan closed the door, though not so sharply as Lena closed the outer door of his bedroom when she went out of it an instant later.

The subject of Martha’s return was not again mentioned directly during the evening; and after dinner, when Lena with arch significance inquired of her silent husband why he had settled down at the library table to write business letters when there was “so much to do in the neighbourhood,” Dan replied, without looking up, that his letters were important⁠—he’d have to beg to be excused from talking. Lena picked up a book, and retired to the easy-chair and the lamp in the bay window, which had once been Harlan’s favourite reading place; but she did not read. She sat looking steadily at her husband⁠—as he thoroughly and uncomfortably understood, though he kept doggedly at his writing.

After a time his mother and father were heard in the hall, going out; and he knew that they were “going over next door” to bid Martha welcome home. They had not mentioned where they were going, and he understood the significance of their not mentioning it⁠—and so did Lena, as she sat watching him. He wondered why he did not rise and say to her: “There’s an old friend of mine next door; I haven’t seen her for years; I ought to go over and tell her I’m glad she’s home, and I want to! There’s no reason I shouldn’t, and you can make the most of it⁠—I’m going!”

Lena had her own wonderings. She wondered why she was keeping her husband from going. Her thought was that she ought to say: “I don’t think I care for you enough any more to have a right to be jealous. Go to your old friend and tell her you’re glad she’s home again, since you wish to. I’m not so small about it as I’m making you think, and I really don’t care.”

Lena wondered why she did not say this to her husband;⁠—in a manner she wanted to say it, and at the same time she knew that she would say nothing of the kind, but on the contrary, intended to keep him in fear of what she might do if he made any effort to appear “cordial,” as he had said, to Martha. Thus the husband and wife sat⁠—the husband bent over his writing and the wife looking at him, her book in her lap. When she looked away from him it was not to the book that her gaze went, but to the wall across the room, where she saw nothing to please her; and when she had looked at the wall for a time she always looked again at Dan. His own eyes were kept to the writing upon the table, yet he must have been conscious of hers when they were upon him, for a deeper frown came upon his forehead whenever she looked away from the wall and again at him.

After a while Mr. and Mrs. Oliphant were heard returning, and in the library it somehow seemed strange, and like an event out of nature’s order, to hear such brisk and cheerful sounds, when the front door opened, letting in the two voices and their owners simultaneously.

“Indeed she is!” Mrs. Oliphant was heard to say, while her husband continued a narrative evidently begun outside.

“And I told her so. I said, ‘By George, if an old maid’s a person who just gets lovelier and lovelier, Martha, why, then, maybe you’re⁠—’ ”

But here his voice so abruptly dropped to a mumble no one could have doubted that the suppression was in obedience to a tactful gesture of his wife’s; nor was it difficult to picture this gesture as a movement of Mrs. Oliphant’s hand toward the open door of the library. Immediately afterward the two were heard ascending the stairs; the house again became as quiet as before; Dan went on with his writing, and Lena with her looking and wondering.

Often such a vigil between husband and wife does not end by leaving things as they were before it began. Between the two silent people appear to have taken place communications so imperceptible that neither is definitely aware of them, yet each may be affected by them as if by words spoken. It would seem that there is a danger here; for with couples not well wedded the unspoken words may be too true, or may carry altogether too much revelation. Lena stopped wondering; and then rather slowly it became clear to her that she and her husband no longer cared for each other at all. Long, long she had clung to her belief that she was still in love with him; and now all she had left to her of this was that she could still be jealous of him. “A fine reason for not leaving a man!” she said to herself;⁠—especially a man who really cared about nothing but his business and his boy!

Suddenly she rose from her chair, the book in her lap falling to the floor, where she let it remain; and then she stood still, while Dan glanced up inquiringly from his work and met the strange, examining, hostile look she gave him.

There was a final moment of silence between them before Lena hurried across the room and left him. A minute later Dan rubbed his forehead, wondering again. Upstairs, Lena had not slammed her door.

He had an absentminded impression that something had happened, but as its nature seemed indefinite, and he had now become more interested in his letters than in Martha’s return or Lena’s temper, he