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I made bold to yawn, but Alderling did not mind that, and then I made bold to say that I thought I would go to bed. He followed me indoors, saying that he would go to bed, too. The hall was lighted from a hanging-lamp and two clear-burning hand-lamps which the widow had put for us on a small table. She had evidently gone home, and left us to ourselves.
She professes to like it, but you never can tell, from what a woman says; she has to do it, anyway." It is hard to convey a notion of the serene, impersonal acquiescence of Mrs. Alderling in taking this talk of her. "I was banging away at it when I knew she was behind me looking over my shoulder rather more stormily than she usually does; usually, she is a dead calm.
Alderling was living absolutely alone, except for the occasional presence of a neighboring widow all the middle-aged women there are widows, with dim or dimmer memories of husbands lost off the Banks, or elsewhere at sea who came in to get his meals and make his bed, and then had instructions to leave.
I alleged engagements, more or less unreal, for I was never on such terms with Alderling that I felt I need make any special sacrifice to him. He gave way, suspiciously, rather, and when I came down from my room after having put the last touches to my packing, I found him on the veranda looking out to seaward, where a heavy fog-bank hung.
It was in one of her prevailing absences that I arrived with my bag, and I had to hammer a long time with the knocker on the open door before Alderling came clacking down the stairs in his slippers from the top of the house, and gave me his somewhat defiant greeting.
"We ran up to the theatre once in Boston last winter, but it bored us to the limit." Alderling poked his knife-blade into the bowl of his pipe as he spoke, having freed his hand for the purpose, while Mrs. Alderling leaned back against the slim column again. He said gravely: "It was a great thing for Marion, though.
We were silent a moment, till I asked, "Is this true, Mrs. Alderling?" "About," she said. "I don't remember the storm, exactly." "Well, I don't see why you bother to remain in the body at all," I remarked. "We haven't arranged just how to leave it together," said Alderling.
"Tell me about your wife, Alderling," I said, and he answered with a sort of scream, "I wanted you to ask me! Why didn't you ask me before? What did you suppose I got you here for?" With that he shrank down, a miserable heap, in his own chair, and bowed his hapless head and cried.
There was nothing in her smile that was leading, and I did not push my inquiry, especially as Alderling did not seem disposed to assist. "Well," I said, "I suppose you will forgive to science my feeling that your situation is most suggestive." "Oh, don't mind us!" said Alderling. "I won't, thank you," I answered. "Why, it's equal to being cast away together on an uninhabited island."
Alderling in the morning after she had got her breakfast dishes put away, in order that we might have something for dessert at our midday dinner; and I went fishing off the old stone crib with Alderling in the afternoon, so that we might have cunners for supper.
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