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Therefore he felt it safe to reason that, without her in his future, the loneliness would become infinitely worse. The marriage, in its inception, might have been altogether Catia's doing. In the end, he had been giving it his full assent, and he took his marriage vows in all sincerity, determined to do his best towards their fulfilment.
Under such conditions, how he wrote his sermons was a question unanswerable by any one but Catia who trimmed the lamps, next morning. To Catia's great disgust, despite the scale of living due to his profession, Brenton had taken it quietly for granted that, for the present, they would keep no maid. His salary was small; he must have something saved to give away in cases of emergency.
Mercifully for Catia's poise, her young husband forebore explaining to her the reason for the three-fold clerical roar which went up upon the heels of her well-meant attention. Afterwards, in looking backward, that evening seemed to Scott to stand out as a dream, unforeseen, yet not inconsequential. Nothing that had gone before appeared to him to be able to explain it.
To Catia it seemed that, the first of her milestones reached, it was time for her to sit down for a while, and rest, and take a little comfort out of thinking over what she already had achieved. To Scott, the first stage of his journey had scarcely been begun. Indeed, it did not even start from that night, nor from any night in which Catia's memory could have a share.
Then, as his hand found nothing before it but a bank of flowers, he emitted one of the customary growls with which, to his more intimate friends, he disclosed the fact that the motors of his ego were temporarily stalled. "Never is any butter at such a time!" he grumbled. Then he rallied to the questioning note in Catia's voice. "What else can I get you, madame?" he inquired benignly.
In fact," Catia added wisely; "they all say that there never does need to be too much work in a parish where a good share of the congregation are very young, and transients." Brenton lifted his head. Then he lifted his brows, fine, narrow brows and arching. "It strikes me that there might be all the more," he said. Catia's fingers beat a tattoo on the table.
Eva Saint Clair Andrews felt herself justified in the retort discourteous. "It is better to keep a country store than it is to hoe your own potatoes, barefoot," she responded tartly. "Besides, what about Scott Brenton's father?" Then, catching sight, by way of the mirror, of Catia's irate countenance, she stayed her speech.
As for the other, lesser members of the congregation, she had an especial kind of smile, half of sweetness, half of deprecation, that she bestowed upon each one of them in turn; but she never made the slightest effort to separate them, one from another, in her mind, or to return any of their calls. To Catia's astute brain, the duty of a rector's lady consisted in helping her husband up, not on.
Not even two years of Catia's corrective moods had taught him to grasp the fact that she would never cease from her corrections until he had given evidence of writhing underneath their sting. It was not enough for her to have the last word; she must be left in a position to gloat upon its visible effect. Else, wherein lay the pleasure of having given it utterance?
"Scott," Catia let go the coffee pot and looked up to face him; "I do wish you'd begin to think about smartening yourself up a little." Brenton, who still clung to his bachelor habit of reading the newspaper between swallows of coffee and snatches of toast and jam, looked up at the arraignment which lay in Catia's tone, if not within her words. "Smarten myself up?" he echoed, in blank question.
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