"A Man May Not Marry His Grandmother" Chapters IV-VI [pp. 126-137]

" A MAN MA Y NOT MARRY HIS GRANDMOTHER."
ways. Marcia had no care for music, but she
enjoyed tragedies, and, it must be confessed, lectures even more than tragedies. So they went
often to the Institute and occasionally to the
theatre. The awkwardness of their earlier meetings had long since worn off, and Marcia seemed
to accept her friend with an even contentment,
which made it not impossible even for him to
jest with her as he recalled their informal introduction to one another. He was sitting alone
with her one evening at her house on return from
the Institute, and she had not yet removed her
hat. Whatever she wore, he would tell her, had
a faint suspicion of old fashion, though he would
have been puzzled to say in what it consisted,
and he always noticed the effect most in the
somewhat stiff room which served as half library,
half sitting-room, at the Churches'.
"How fashions come round in course of
time!" he said, eying her more curiously than he
knew.
She lowered her chin, and looked down on
herself, to discover what he was remarking.
"You have an extraordinary way of looking
as if you saw something, Mr. Devons."
"Oh, I was noticing the handkerchief which
you wear round your throat."
She untied it and took it off.
"There, the effect's gone; but you had a singular likeness just then to that quaint picture
which your mother showed me once of you,
taken as if you were your grandmother. Pray
let me see it again."
She found the book for him, and they looked
at the picture together.
"I remember very well when that was taken.
I stood before the glass and tried to fancy how
I should feel when I was as old as I looked, but
of course I could not."
"No; it is fortunate that we never can really
be anything else than what we are at the moment, and you were only simulating an old woman."
"I don't believe I shall mind being one. I
would rather stand at the end of such a life of
ours than at the beginning. Fifty years hence,
when you and I begin to feel old, we shall have
all the more to remember, shall we not?"
There was something of a surprise in her
words, and in her voice as well, which was rarely so tender.
"Give me the two pictures, will you not?
Then fifty years hence we can look at them and
see in which you are imitating the other."
He laid his hand persuasively beside hers on
the book. She drew out the two pictures, and
looked again at them.
"Well, take them, if you like, and look at
them once more fifty years from now."
" I suppose I may look at them before that,"
he rejoined, smiling, as he took them from her.
Marcia did not respond, and the conversation
passed upon other matters. Devons felt a constraint which made him awkward in his words.
He seemed to be talking almost in another voice,
and he rose presently to take his leave. Marcia
gave him her hand at parting, an unusual gift for
her. He held it a moment.
"I shall not seal the pictures,' To be opened in
fifty years,'" he said, as he left her, and he hurried away, profoundly agitated in his mind. A
word, a look, a tone had seemed to make an
opening in some invisible curtain which hung between them. Why had he not, with the boldness of watchful love, seized the rent and made
it irreparable?
VI.
THERE had been a number of raw, east-wind
days in the spring, which conspired to keep people in-doors, while Spring was privately making
arrangements for her yearly surprise. The governor had appointed the customary fast, which
fell on a Thursday in the middle of April. The
usual doubts were expressed by people as to the
propriety of continuing the observance, and the
usual preparations were made by the bulk of the
people for enjoying a holiday after the long winter seclusion. Devons, used to a country home,
was possessed with a longing to get into the
open fields; he could, indeed, go any day he
chose, but the regularity of his life made an individual holiday something against the rules, and
he was as glad as others to avail himself.of a
State holiday. Moreover, he had been pleasing
himself with the idea that he should like for once
to separate Marcia from her books and her house,
and taste the pleasure of unrestricted companionship under larger skies. It was to be a holiday for
her, too, for the library would be closed.
"Let us go into the country Thursday," said
he, as they sat over the wood fire a few evenings after she had given him the pictures. "Let
us celebrate Spring by going out to meet her. I
have no complaint to make of the winter, but I
begin to feel my wings twitch, and I want to try
them a-field."
"I am a little restless myself," she replied,
with a smile. " I am not sure that I am quite
ready to fly, but I will look on and see you —"
"Fly away? I hope not."
There followed one of those long pauses which
had grown somewhat common of late with them.
It was broken by Devons saying:
"I can not help wishing that you played or
sang. Silence is sometimes better than talk, and
music is sometimes better than silence. I confess I should be glad, in the indolent mood I am
now in, if you were to sit down unbidden at
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