The Story of Miranda - Complete Trilogy (Marcia Schuyler, Phoebe Deane & Miranda). Grace Livingston Hill

seemed to suggest a long line of offended family portraits of ancestors frowning down upon her.

      Marcia’s cheeks flamed crimson and her heart fairly stopped beating.

      “I beg your pardon,” she said quickly, “I did not mean to say anything disagreeable. I am sure I shall be glad to come as often as you will let me.” As she said it Marcia wondered if that were quite true. Would she ever be glad to go to the home of those two severe-looking aunts? There were three of them. Perhaps the other one would be even more withered and severe than these two. A slight shudder passed over Marcia, and a sudden realization of a side of married life that had never come into her thoughts before. For a moment she longed with all the intensity of a child for her father’s house and the shelter of his loving protection, amply supported by her stepmother’s capable, self-sufficient, comforting countenance. Her heart sank with the fear that she would never be able to do justice to the position of David’s wife, and David would be disappointed in her and sorry he had accepted her sacrifice. She roused herself to do better, and bit her tongue to remind it that it must make no more blunders. She praised the garden, the house and the furnishings, in voluble, eager, girlish language until the thin lines of lips relaxed and the drawn muscles of the aunts’ cheeks took on a less severe aspect. They liked to be appreciated, and they certainly had taken a great deal of pains with the house—for David’s sake—not for hers. They did not care to have her deluded by the idea that they had done it for her sake. David was to them a young god, and with this one supreme idea of his supremacy they wished to impress his young wife. It was a foregone conclusion in their minds that no mere pretty young girl was capable of appreciating David, as could they, who had watched him from babyhood, and pampered and petted and been severe with him by turns, until if he had not had the temper of an angel he would surely have been spoiled.

      “We did our best to make the house just as David would have wished to have it,” said Aunt Amelia at last, a self-satisfied shadow of what answered for a smile with her, passing over her face for a moment.

      “We did not at all approve of this big house, nor indeed of David’s setting up in a separate establishment for himself,” said Aunt Hortense, taking up her knitting again. “We thought it utterly unnecessary and uneconomical, when he might have brought his wife home to us, but he seemed to think you would want a house to yourself, so we did the best we could.”

      There was a martyr-like air in Aunt Hortense’s words that made Marcia feel herself again a criminal, albeit she knew she was suffering vicariously. But in her heart she felt a sudden thankfulness that she was spared the trial of living daily under the scrutiny of these two, and she blest David for his thoughtfulness, even though it had not been meant for her. She went into pleased ecstasies once more over the house, and its furnishings, and ended by her pleasure over the piano.

      There was grim stillness when she touched upon that subject. The aunts did not approve of that musical instrument, that was plain. Marcia wondered if they always paused so long before speaking when they disapproved, in order to show their displeasure. In fact, did they always disapprove of everything?

      “You will want to be very careful of it,” said Aunt Amelia, looking at the disputed article over her glasses, “it cost a good deal of money. It was the most foolish thing I ever knew David to do, buying that.”

      “Yes,” said Aunt Hortense, “you will not want to use it much, it might get scratched. It has a fine polish. I’d keep it closed up only when I had company. You ought to be very proud to have a husband who could buy a thing like that. There’s not many has them. When I was a girl my grandfather had a spinet, the only one for miles around, and it was taken great care of. The case hadn’t a scratch on it.”

      Marcia had started toward the piano intending to open it and play for her new relatives, but she halted midway in the room and came back to her seat after that speech, feeling that she must just sit and hold her hands until it was time to get supper, while these dreadful aunts picked her to pieces, body, soul and spirit.

      It was with great relief at last that she heard David’s step and knew she might leave the room and put the tea things upon the table.

      CHAPTER XI

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      They got through the supper without any trouble, and the aunts went home in the early twilight, each with her bonnet strings tied precisely, her lace mitts drawn smoothly over her bony hands, and her little knitting bag over her right arm. They walked decorously up the shaded, elm-domed street, each mindful of her aristocratic instep, and trying to walk erect as in the days when they were gazed upon with admiration, knowing that still an air of former greatness hovered about them wherever they went.

      They had brightened considerably at the supper table, under the genial influence of David’s presence. They came as near to worshiping David as one can possibly come to worshiping a human being. David, desirous above all things of blinding their keen, sure-to-say-“I-told-you-so” old eyes, roused to be his former gay self with them, and pleased them so that they did not notice how little lover-like reference he made to his bride, who was decidedly in the background for the time, the aunts, perhaps purposely, desiring to show her a wife’s true place,—at least the true place of a wife of a David.

      They had allowed her to bring their things and help them on with capes and bonnets, and, when they were ready to leave, Aunt Amelia put out a lifeless hand, that felt in its silk mitt like a dead fish in a net, and said to Marcia:

      “Our sister Clarinda is desirous of seeing David’s wife. She wished us most particularly to give you her love and say to you that she wishes you to come to her at the earliest possible moment. You know she is lame and cannot easily get about.”

      “Young folks should always be ready to wait upon their elders,” said Aunt Hortense, grimly. “Come as soon as you can,—that is, if you think you can stand the smell of salt-rising.”

      Marcia’s face flushed painfully, and she glanced quickly at David to see if he had noticed what his aunt had said, but David was already anticipating the moment when he would be free to lay aside his mask and bury his face in his hands and his thoughts in sadness.

      Marcia’s heart sank as she went about clearing off the supper things. Was life always to be thus? Would she be forever under the espionage of those two grim spectres of women, who seemed, to her girlish imagination, to have nothing about them warm or loving or woman-like?

      She seemed to herself to be standing outside of a married life and looking on at it as one might gaze on a panorama. It was all new and painful, and she was one of the central figures expected to act on through all the pictures, taking another’s place, yet doing it as if it were her own. She glanced over at David’s pale, grave face, set in its sadness, and a sharp pain went through her heart. Would he ever get over it? Would life never be more cheerful than it now was?

      He spoke to her occasionally, in a pleasant abstracted way, as to one who understood him and was kind not to trouble his sadness, and he lighted a candle for her when the work was done and said he hoped she would rest well, that she must still be weary from the long journey. And so she went up to her room again.

      She did not go to bed at once, but sat down by the window looking out on the moonlit street. There had been some sort of a meeting at the church across the way, and the people were filing out and taking their various ways home, calling pleasant good nights, and speaking cheerily of the morrow. The moon, though beginning to wane, was bright and cast sharp shadows. Marcia longed to get out into the night. If she could have got downstairs without being heard she would have slipped out into the garden. But downstairs she could hear David pacing back and forth like some hurt, caged thing. Steadily, dully, he walked from the front hall back into the kitchen and back again. There was no possibility of escaping his notice. Marcia felt as if she might breathe freer in the open air, so she leaned far out of her window and looked up and down the street, and thought. Finally,—her heart swelled to bursting, as young hearts with their first little troubles will do,—she leaned down her dark head upon the window