Grace Livingston Hill - According to the Pattern (Romance Classic)

With firm determination she laid down the magazine and walked deliberately to her desk. Her fingers did not tremble nor the resolute look pass from her chin as she selected plain paper and envelope and wrote. The words seemed to come without need of thought. She stated the case clearly in a few words, and signed her grandmother’s initials. She folded, addressed the letter, and sent her sleepy little maid to post it before the set look relaxed.

Then having done all that was in her power to do that night she went up to her room in the dark and smothering her head in the pillow so that the baby should not be disturbed she let the wild sobs have their way.

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“It is just barely possible I may have to take a flying trip to Paris,” Claude Winthrop announced casually, looking up from the newspaper which had been engrossing his attention.

It was the next morning and his wife unrefreshed from her night’s vigil was sitting quietly in her place at the breakfast table. She looked now and then at the top of her husband’s head, thinking of his face as she had seen it in the park, and trying to realize that all around her was just the same outwardly as it had been yesterday and all the days that had gone before, only she knew that it was all so different.

She made some slight reply. He had said so many times that he hoped his business would take him abroad soon, that she ceased to reproach him for desiring to go without her and the children as she had done at first. She began to feel that he would not really go after all. It had been a source of uneasiness to her many times, for she had a morbid horror of having the wide ocean separate her from the one she loved better than all on earth besides. But this morning, in the light of recent discoveries, she realized that even this trouble of the past was as nothing beside what was laid upon her now to bear.

How often it is that when we mock at a trouble, or detract from its magnitude, it comes upon us suddenly as if to taunt us and reveal its true heaviness. Miriam Winthrop felt this with a sudden sharp pang a little later that day when she received and read a brief note from her husband brought by a messenger boy. For the moment all her more recent grief was forgotten and she was tormented by her former fears and dread.

“Dear Miriam,” he had scrawled on the back of a business envelope, “I’ve got to go at once. The firm thinks I’m the only one who can represent them in Paris just now, and if I don’t go there’ll be trouble. I’m sorry it comes with such a rush but it’s a fine thing for me. Pack my grip with what you think I need for a month. I don’t want to be bothered with much. I may not get home till late and fear I shall have to take the midnight train. Haste. Claude.”

She did not stop now to study the phraseology of the hastily worded note, nor let the coldness and baldness of the announcement enter her soul like a keen blade as it would be sure to do later when the trial began in dead earnest. She did not even give a thought to the difference between this note and those he used to write her when they were first married. It was enough to realize that he was going across that terrible ocean without her and talking about it as calmly as if he were but going downtown. Other people let their husbands go off without a murmur. There was Mrs. Forsythe, who smilingly said she intended to send her husband on a tour for six months so that she could be free from household cares and do as she pleased for a little while. But then she was Mr. Forsythe’s wife, and Claude was—and then there came that sudden sharp remembrance of yesterday and its revelation, and her sorrow entered full into her being with a realization of what it was going to mean. Yes, perhaps she ought to be glad he was going away. But she was not—oh, she was not! It was worse a hundred-fold than it would have been if it had come two days ago. Now she was plunged into the awfulness of the black abyss that had yawned before her feet, and Claude was going from her and would not be there to help her out by any possible explanation, nor even to know of the horror in her path, for she knew in her heart that she could not and would not tell him her discovery now before he went. There would not be time, even if it were wise. No, she must bear it alone until he returned, if he ever did. Oh, that deep awful sea that must roll over her troubled heart for weeks before she could hope to begin to change things. Could she stand it? Would she live to brave it through?

A ringing baby laugh from the nursery, where Celia was drawing a wooly lamb over the floor, recalled her courage. She closed her lips in their firm lines once more and knew she would, she must!

Just one more awful thought came to her and glared at her with green, deriding, menacing eyes of possibility. That woman, could she, was she going abroad? There had been such things! Her brain reeled at the thought and with fear and wrath she put it away from her. She would never think that of Claude. No, never! She must go about making preparations for him, for there was much to be done, some mending, and where had that package of laundry been put? and, oh, the horror of having to doubt one’s husband! Claude might have been injudicious, but never wicked! No! She was unworthy to be his wife when she could think such things with absolutely nothing to found them upon save a simple everyday ride in the park. She hurried upstairs to bureau drawers and sent the nurse and the maid-of-all-work flying about on various errands and herself worked with swift, skilled fingers. But all the time the ache grew in her heart till it seemed it must break.

He did not come home to lunch. She had not expected that. She scarcely stopped herself to make a pretence of eating. So eager was she to complete the little things she had thought of to do for his comfort during the voyage before he should return that she forgot herself entirely in her present duties. The stinging tears welled up to her eyes without falling as they had done the night before, and burned themselves dry, again and again, and still she worked on feverishly, adding other little touches to the preparations she had made. He should not have cause for impatience that she had forgotten anything in his thought of her during the trip. She even put in his old cap that he was fond of wearing in traveling and which heretofore she had always struggled to secrete safely before they set out for a journey. There was a fine disregard of self in all that she did about the suit-case and a close attention to details of his liking. If he had any thought left for her at all he could not fail to note it.

She carefully placed a leather photograph case, a present from the children on last Christmas, containing all their likenesses with hers, in an inner pocket with his handkerchief, and then on second thought took it out to remove her own face and put in its place a new pose of the baby. She would not seek to remind him thus of her. He should see that she no longer put in any claims for his affection. Just why she did this she could not explain to herself, but she felt a triumph over herself in having done it. Was it revenge or love or jealousy or all? She did not know. She sat down beside the completed work and let great drops fall on the heavy, unresponsive leather, and groaned aloud, and then got up hastily to wipe her eyes and flash them in defiance at herself in the mirror. She would not give way now. She must act her part till he was gone. Then she would weep until she could get relief enough to think and know what to do.

He came late to dinner and brought his secretary with him. During the meal they were going over certain business matters which were to be left in this young man’s charge. Miriam presided over her table and supplied their needs and held her tongue, feeling in this brief time of quietness and inaction how weary she was, how every nerve quivered with pain, how her eyeballs stung, and how the little veins in her temples throbbed.