Men, Women, and Ghosts | Page 7

her very pretty and "proper" in her appearance. Now, without the vaguest idea what was the trouble, he understood that something was wrong. A woman would have said, Mrs. Sharpe looks dowdy and old-fashioned; he only considered that Miss Dallas had a pleasant air, like a soft brown picture with crimson lights let in, and that it was an air which his wife lacked. So, when Rocko dragged heavily and more heavily at his mother's skirts, and the Doctor and Pauline wandered off to climb the cliffs, Harrie did not seek to follow or to call them back. She sat down with Rocko on the beach, wrapped herself with a savage hug in the ugly shawl, and wondered with a bitterness with which only women can wonder over such trifles, why God should send Pauline all the pretty beach-dresses and deny them to her,--for Harrie, like many another "dowdy" woman whom you see upon the street, my dear madam, was a woman of fine, keen tastes, and would have appreciated the soft browns no less than yourself. It seemed to her the very sting of poverty, just then, that one must wear purple dresses and blue bonnets.
At the tea-table the Doctor fell to reconstructing the country, and Miss Dallas, who was quite a politician in Miss Dallas's way, observed that the horizon looked brighter since Tennessee's admittance, and that she hoped that the clouds, &c.,--and what did he think of Brownlow? &c., &c.
"Tennessee!" exclaimed Harrie; "why, how long has Tennessee been in? I didn't know anything about it."
Miss Dallas smiled kindly. Dr. Sharpe bit his lip, and his face flushed.
"Harrie, you really ought to read the papers," he said, with some impatience; "it's no wonder you don't know anything."
"How should I know anything, tied to the children all day?" Harrie spoke quickly, for the hot tears sprang. "Why didn't you tell me something about Tennessee? You never talk politics with me."
This began to be awkward; Miss Dallas, who never interfered--on principle--between husband and wife, gracefully took up the baby, and gracefully swung her dainty Geneva watch for the child's amusement, smiling brilliantly. She could not endure babies, but you would never have suspected it.
In fact, when Pauline had been in the house four or five days, Harrie, who never thought very much of herself, became so painfully alive to her own deficiencies, that she fell into a permanent fit of low spirits, which did not add either to her appearance or her vivacity.
"Pauline is so pretty and bright!" she wrote to me. "I always knew I was a little fool. You can be a fool before you're married, just as well as not. Then, when you have three babies to look after, it is too late to make yourself over. I try very hard now to read the newspapers, only Myron does not know it."
One morning something occurred to Mrs. Sharpe. It was simply that her husband had spent every evening at home for a week. She was in the nursery when the thought struck her, rocking slowly in her low sewing-chair, holding the baby on one arm and trying to darn stockings with the other.
Pauline was--she did not really know where. Was not that her voice upon the porch? The rocking-chair stopped sharply, and Harrie looked down through the blinds. The Doctor's horse was tied at the gate. The Doctor sat fanning himself with his hat in one of the garden chairs; Miss Dallas occupied the other; she was chatting, and twisting her golden wools about her fingers,--it was noticeable that she used only golden wools that morning; her dress was pale blue, and the effect of the purples would not have been good.
"I thought your calls were going to take till dinner, Myron," called Harrie, through the blinds.
"I thought so too," said Myron, placidly, "but they do not seem to. Won't you come down?"
Harrie thanked him, saying, in a pleasant nonchalant way, that she could not leave the baby. It was almost the first bit of acting that the child had ever been guilty of,--for the baby was just going to sleep, and she knew it.
She turned away from the window quietly. She could not have been angry, and scolded; or noisy, and cried. She put little Harrie into her cradle, crept upon the bed, and lay perfectly still for a long time.
When the dinner-bell rang, and she got up to brush her hair, that absent, apathetic look of which I have spoken had left her eyes. A stealthy brightness came and went in them, which her husband might have observed if he and Miss Dallas had not been deep in the Woman question. Pauline saw it; Pauline saw everything.
"Why did you not come down and sit with us this morning?" she asked, reproachfully, when she and Harrie