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Alex Randall’s Conversion
by
“No, you didn’t, Matilda: you didn’t have to stay any more than I did.”
“Elick!”
The woman’s voice had a sharp reproof in it. He had touched the Calvinistic quick. She might not reverence the man, but the minister was sacred.
“Well, I can’t help it,” persisted her husband obstinately. “You can take what you please off him. I don’t want him to say anything to me.”
“Oh, he didn’t say anything, Elick. What was there to say?”
“He doesn’t gener’ly keep still because he has nothin’ to say.”
The man gave a muffled, explosive laugh, and pushed back his chair. Mrs. Randall’s eyelids reddened. She laid down her work and got up.
“I guess I’ll take off this dress before I clear up the things,” she said, in a voice of temporary defeat.
Her husband picked up the empty water-pail as he left the kitchen, and filled it at the well. When he brought it back there was no one visible.
“Need any wood, Tildy?” he called toward the bedroom where she was dressing.
“No, I guess not.” The voice was indistinct, but she might have had her skirt over her head. Alex made a half-conciliatory pause. He preferred to know that she was not crying.
“How you been feelin’ to-day?”
“Middlin’.”
She was not crying. The man gave his trousers a hitch of relief, and went back to his work.
There had been a scandal in Alex Randall’s early married life. The scattered country community had stood aghast before the certainty of his guilt, and there had been a little lull in the gossip while they waited to see what his wife would do.
Matilda Hazlitt had been counted a spirited girl before her marriage, and there were few of her neighbors who hesitated to assert that she would take her baby and go back to her father’s house. It had been a nine-days’ wonder when she had elected to believe in her husband. The injured girl had been an adopted member of the elder Randall’s household, half servant, half daughter, and it was whispered that her love for Alex was older than his marriage. Just how much of the neighborhood talk had reached Matilda’s ears no one knew. The girl had gone away, and the community had accepted Alex Randall for his wife’s sake, but not unqualifiedly.
Mrs. Randall had never been very strong, and of late she had become something of an invalid, as invalidism goes in the country, where women are constantly ailing without any visible neglect of duty. It had “broke her spirit,” the women said. Some of the younger of them blamed her, but in the main it was esteemed a wifely and Christian course that she should make this pretense of confidence in her husband’s innocence for the sake of her child. No one wondered that it wore upon her health.
Alex had been grateful, every one acknowledged, and it was this fact of his dogged consideration for Matilda’s comfort that served more than anything else to reinstate him somewhat in the good opinion of his neighbors. There had been a good deal of covert sympathy for Mrs. Randall at first, but as years went by it had died out for lack of opportunity to display itself. True, the minister had made an effort once to express to her his approval of her course, but it was not likely that any one else would undertake it, nor that he would repeat the attempt. She had looked at him curiously, and when she spoke the iciness of her tone made his own somewhat frigid utterances seem blushingly warm and familiar by contrast.
“It would be strange,” she said, “if a wife should need encouragement to stand by her husband when he is in trouble.”
Alex had hated the minister ever since, and had made this an excuse for growing neglect of religious duties.
“It is no wonder he dreads to go to preachin’, with that awful sin on his conscience,” the women whispered to one another. They always whispered when they spoke of sin, as if it were sleeping somewhere near, and were liable to be aroused. Matilda divined their thoughts, and fretted under Alex’s neglect of public service. She wished him to carry his head high, with the dignity of innocence. It appalled him at times to see how perfectly she apprehended her own part as the wife of a man wrongfully accused. He was not dull, but he had a stupid masculine candor of soul that stood aghast before her unswerving hypocrisy. She had never asked him to deny his guilt; she had simply set herself to establish his innocence.