was a quarter past seven, and she deferred beginning her task till after tea.
The servant announced the meal, and by Deena’s orders knocked at the study door, but got no response; indeed, the pièce de résistance– the smoked beef and eggs – had almost hardened into a solid cake before the friends emerged, arm in arm, and followed Deena to the table. French drew out her chair with that slight exaggeration of courtesy that lent a charm to all he did, and with his hands still on the bar he bent over her and said – smiling the while at Simeon:
“I have been telling your husband of what I hinted to you this afternoon, Mrs. Ponsonby; the expedition to Patagonia and his chance to join it.”
Simeon’s brow contracted. It was disagreeable to him to have momentous affairs like his own discussed by anticipation with Deena – Deena, who was only a woman, and he now feared a silly one at that.
“It is no secret, then!” said Simeon, contemptuously, and added, turning to his wife: “Be good enough not to speak of this before the servant; I should be sorry to have the faculty hear of such a thing from anyone but me.”
She grew scarlet, but managed to murmur a word of acquiescence. Stephen looked amazed; he thought he must be mistaken in the rudeness of his friend’s manner, and then began making imaginary excuses for him. Of course, the tea table was not the place for confidences, and, naturally, a man would prefer telling such things privately to his wife, and the rebuke was meant for him, not for Mrs. Ponsonby. How lovely she looked – even prettier than in those smart clothes she had worn in the morning. He wondered whether Ponsonby knew how absolutely perfect she was.
The servant was much in the room, and the talk turned on the progressive spirit of Argentina, its railroads, its great natural resources, its vast agricultural development. It was a dialogue between the men, for Simeon addressed himself exclusively to French – what could a woman know of what goes to make the wealth of nations! – and, as for Stephen, he was still uncomfortable from the failure of his first effort to bring her into the discussion.
When tea was over Simeon pushed back his chair and was about to stalk from the room, when he remembered that French was his guest, and halted to let him go out first, but when French waited beside him to let Deena pass, an expression of impatience crossed her husband’s face, as if the precious half seconds he could so ill spare from his work, in order to reach conclusions, were being sacrificed to dancing master ceremonials.
Deena sat sewing till Stephen came to bid her good-night.
“I think it is all arranged,” he said, but without the joyousness of his first announcement. He had, perhaps, lost a little of his interest in his friend, Ponsonby, since the incident at the tea table.
Deena, with a woman’s instinct, guessed at his feelings, and made no effort to detain him. She was tired and discouraged, and would gladly have gone to bed when their guest departed, except for a suspicion that Simeon would want to talk things over with her, in spite of his seeming indifference. She was not mistaken. In ten minutes he came into the parlor and threw himself wearily on the sofa.
“Deena,” he said, and his tone was kind, “if I should go away for six months, do you think you could manage without me?”
“I am sure I could,” she answered, cheerfully, “and I want to say to you, now that you have opened the subject, that you must not let my expenses stand in your way. I know, of course, if you give up your college work, part of your salary would naturally pass to the person who, for the time, undertakes your duties, and I have been thinking that a simple plan would be to rent this house.”
The idea was not quite agreeable to Simeon – the old house was part of himself; he had been born there; his love for his mother overflowed into every rickety chair; but the common-sense commercial value of the scheme made him regard Deena with revived respect.
“It is hardly practicable,” he said. “In the first place, it is too old-fashioned to attract, and, in the second, there is no market for furnished houses at Harmouth.”
“Mrs. Barnes would take it, I fancy,” said Deena. “She is the mother of the student who was hurt last week in the football match. She is trying everywhere to find a furnished house so that she can take care of him and yet let him stay on here. I think we could rent it, Simeon, and I should need so little – so very little to keep me while you are gone.”
He took off his spectacles and sat up.
“It isn’t a bad idea,” he said, almost gayly. “The rent would pay the taxes and give you a small income besides, and leave me practically free. You have relieved my mind of a serious worry. Thank you, Deena.”
“You will see the president to-morrow?” she asked.
He hesitated before admitting that such was his intention; it was one thing for his wife to meet his difficulties with practical suggestions, and quite another for her to put intrusive questions.
“You shall be informed when things take a definite shape,” he said, pompously. “Good-night, my dear; I shall be at work on my galley proof till daylight.”
“Good-night, Simeon,” she said, gently. “I am sorry I displeased you today.”
He mumbled something about young people having to make mistakes, but his mumble was pleasant, and then he crossed to her side, and kissed her forehead.
She felt the pucker of his lips like wrinkled leather, but she told herself it was kind in Simeon to kiss her.
As she laid her head on her pillow, she thought:
“He never had the curiosity to ask what I proposed to do with myself when my home and husband were taken from me,” and the tears came at last, unchecked.
CHAPTER III
Simeon was gone – gone with his clothes packed in the sole leather trunk that his father had used before him, but with an equipment for botanizing as modern and extended as his personal arrangements were meager.
The house was rented to Mrs. Barnes, the mother of the too ardent champion of the football field – but as her son was too suffering to be moved for several weeks to come, Deena had leisure to get the house in order and habituate herself to the idea of being homeless.
Simeon behaved liberally in money matters; that is, he arranged that the rent should be paid to his wife, and he gave her a power of attorney which was to make her free of his bank account should anything delay his return beyond her resources. At the same time the injunctions against spending were so solemn that she understood she was to regard her control of his money as a mere formality – a peradventure – made as one makes his will, anticipating the unlikely.
The faculty made no objection to Simeon’s going; indeed, his researches were thought likely to redound to the high scientific reputation that Harmouth particularly cherished, and Stephen French had taken care to foster this impression.
The day he left was sharp for October; a wood fire crackled on the hearth in the dining room, and Deena, pale and calm, sat behind the breakfast service and made his coffee for the last time in many months. He ate and drank, and filled in the moments with the Harmouth Morning Herald, and his wife’s natural courtesy forbade her interrupting him. Without a word he stretched his arm across the table with his cup to have it refilled, and Deena, feeling her insignificance as compared with the morning news, still dared not speak. When finally he pushed back his chair, the little carryall was at the door waiting to take him and his luggage to the train.
“You will write from New York, Simeon, and again by the pilot,” she urged, following him into the hall. “And where is your first port – Rio? Then from Rio, and as often as you can.”
He was stuffing the pockets of his overcoat with papers and pamphlets, but he nodded assent.
She came a step nearer and laid her hand on his arm.
“Be sure I shall try to do as you would wish,” she half whispered, and there were tears in her eyes.
“To be sure, to be sure,” said Simeon, with a kind of embarrassment. “Oh, yes, I shall write frequently – if not to you,