“Nonsense! Let her stay with her mother; you sell out your interest in the business, put the money into an assorted cargo, and clap it and yourself into the first ship out of Boston--and there you are. You've been married going on two years now, and a little separation until you've built up a business out there, won't do either of you any harm.”
Blandford, who was very much in love with his wife, was not, however, above putting the onus of embarrassing affection upon HER. “You don't know, Joan, Dick,” he replied. “She'd never consent to a separation, even for a short time.”
“Try her. She's a sensible woman--a deuced sight more than you are. You don't understand women, Ned. That's what's the matter with you.”
It required all of Blandford's fond memories of his wife's conservative habits, Puritan practicality, religious domesticity, and strong family attachments, to withstand Demorest's dogmatic convictions. He smiled, however, with a certain complacency, as he also recalled the previous autumn when the first news of the California gold discovery had penetrated North Liberty, and he had expressed to her his belief that it would offer an outlet to Demorest's adventurous energy. She had received it with ill-disguised satisfaction, and the remark that if this exodus of Mammon cleared the community of the godless and unregenerate it would only be another proof of God's mysterious providence.
With the tumultuous wind at their backs it was not long before the buggy rattled once more over the cobble-stones of the town. Under the direction of his friend, Demorest, who still retained possession of the reins, drove briskly down a side street of more pretentious dwellings, where Blandford lived. One or two wayfarers looked up.
“Why? I want to bring you up to your door in style.”
“Yes--but--it's Sunday. That's my house, the corner one.”
They had stopped before a square, two-storied brick house, with an equally square wooden porch supported by two plain, rigid wooden columns, and a hollow sweep of dull concavity above the door, evidently of the same architectural order as the church. There was no corner or projection to break the force of the wind that swept its smooth glacial surface; there was no indication of light or warmth behind its six closed windows.