Chapter 24: A Woman’s View

Sydney Atherton has asked me to be his wife. It is not only annoying; worse, it is absurd.

This is the result of Paul’s wish that our engagement should not be announced. He is afraid of papa;—not really, but for the moment. The atmosphere of the House is charged with electricity. Party feeling runs high. They are at each other, hammer and tongs, about this Agricultural Amendment Act. The strain on Paul is tremendous. I am beginning to feel positively concerned. Little things which I have noticed about him lately convince me that he is being overwrought. I suspect him of having sleepless nights. The amount of work which he has been getting through lately has been too much for any single human being, I care not who he is. He himself admits that he shall be glad when the session is at an end. So shall I.

In the meantime, it is his desire that nothing shall be said about our engagement until the House rises. It is reasonable enough. Papa is sure to be violent, —lately, the barest allusion to Paul’s name has been enough to make him explode. When the discovery does come, he will be unmanageable, —I foresee it clearly. From little incidents which have happened recently I predict the worst. He will be capable of making a scene within the precincts of the House. And, as Paul says, there is some truth in the saying that the last straw breaks the camel’s back. He will be better able to face papa’s wild wrath when the House has risen.

So the news is to bide a wee. Of course Paul is right. And what he wishes I wish too. Still, it is not all such plain sailing for me as he perhaps thinks. The domestic atmosphere is almost as electrical as that in the House. Papa is like the terrier who scents a rat, —he is always sniffing the air. He has not actually forbidden me to speak to Paul, —his courage is not quite at the sticking point; but he is constantly making uncomfortable allusions to persons who number among their acquaintance ‘political adventurers,’ ‘grasping carpet-baggers,’ ‘Radical riff-raff,’ and that kind of thing. Sometimes I venture to call my soul my own; but such a tempest invariably follows that I become discreet again as soon as I possibly can. So, as a rule, I suffer in silence.