Then Robert denied all his promises and said: "I fear not, for a long time. Business must be attended to."
"I am glad you are regaining your senses, Robert," said his mother. "Your business has been dreadfully neglected for more than half-a-year."
"It has taken no harm, mother, and I shall double my attention now."
"I hope you will – but I doubt it."
"Dora," said Christina, "may I call you Dora?"
"Dora, certainly," interrupted Mrs. Traquair Campbell. "Theodora is too long a name for conversation. Do you wish any more ice? Do you, Isabel?"
Theodora was confounded by such rude and positive ignoring. The question had been addressed to her, and referred to her Christian name – the most personal of all belongings. Yet it had been peremptorily decided for her without any regard to her right or wish. Her cheeks flushed hotly, and she looked at her husband. Surely he would spare her the distressing position of denying her mother-in-law's decision, or affirming her own. But Robert Campbell was as one that heard not. His eyes were upon his plate, and he was embarrassed even in the simple act of eating. At that moment she had almost a contempt for him. But seeing that he did not intend to interfere, she smiled at Christina, and said:
"You will call me Dora, I suppose, as you are bid to do so, and when I feel like it, I shall answer to that name. When I do not feel disposed to answer to Dora, I shall be silent. That is, you know, my privilege." She spoke with a smile and charming manner, and then, looking at her husband, rose from the table. Robert sauntered after her, making some remark about tea to his mother as he passed her.
She could not answer him. This leave-taking, unauthorized by her example, stupefied the elder woman. "Do you see, Isabel," she cried, "what I shall have to endure?"
"Dinner was really finished, mother."
"That makes no difference! No one has a right to leave the table until I rise. I consider Dora's behavior a piece of impertinence."
"I do not think she intended it to be impertinent."
"Her intention makes no difference. No one has a right to leave my table until I set the example. And if Dora's behavior was not impertinent, then it was stupid ignorance, and I shall instruct her in the decencies of respectable life. And I tell you both to remember that her name is Dora. I will have no Theodoras here. Fancy people going about the house calling 'The-o-do-ra.' Ridiculous!"
"Well, mother, I ask leave to say that I should not like any one without my permission to call me Bell, nor do I believe Christina would care to be called Kirsty. And I really think Robert's wife wished to be agreeable, and even friendly, if we had encouraged her. Why not give her a fair trial? I think she could teach Christina and myself many things."
"I think you are bewitched as well as your brother. I never knew you, Isabel, to make any exceptions to my opinions – or to see me insulted without feeling a proper indignation with me."
"Oh, dear mother, you are mistaken! The day will never come when your daughter Isabel will not stand shoulder to shoulder with you."
"I am sure of that. I wish Christina had not asked such an obtrusive question. I had to answer it as I did, in order to show that woman that we – in our own home here – would call her just what we preferred to call her, without let or hindrance; yet I wish that Christina had kept her foolish question for a little longer. I was hardly ready for active opposition. It is premature. Christina always interferes at the wrong moment." So Christina, snubbed and blamed for her malapropos question, subsided into sullen indifference externally, while inwardly passing on the blame for her correction to Theodora, who, she decided, was going to be unlucky to her.
In the meantime Robert had walked with his wife to the parlor door of their own apartments, but he did not enter with her. "I am going to leave you half-an-hour, Dora," he said. "I wish to smoke a cigar in the library."
"I should like to go with you, Robert, as I have always done. I enjoy good tobacco."
"Walking on some lovely balcony, overlooking the Mediterranean, it was pleasant; but here it is not the thing. If you went with me, I might have the whole family, as the library, like the dining-room, is common ground. Circumstances alter cases, Dora. You know that, my dear! I will return in half-an-hour."
She had a slight struggle with herself to answer pleasantly, but that free and loving thing, the human soul, was in Theodora's case under kind but positive control, so she replied with a smile:
"As you wish, dear Robert – yet I shall miss you."
She was alone in her splendid rooms, and her heart fell. The day had been a hard one. From the moment they left Kendal, Robert had been disagreeably silent. He knew that he was going home to a struggle with his family, and he dreaded the experience. Had it been a struggle with business difficulties he would have risen bravely to its demands. A dispute with women irritated him. In his thoughts he called it "trivial." But had he known all that such a dispute generally involves, he would have sought out for it the most portentous and distracting word in all the languages of earth.
So Theodora left to herself sat down with a sinking heart. The change in her husband's temper troubled her; the total absence of all human welcome to her new home troubled her still more. The occupation of her rooms by strangers, the rifling of her trunks, the half-quarrelsome dinner, the despotic changing of her name might be – as compared with death, accident, or ruin – "trivial" troubles, but she was poignantly wounded in her feelings by them. And their crowning grief was one she hardly dared to remember – her husband's failure to defend the name he had so often passionately sworn he loved better than all other names. True, she had permitted him to call her Dora, but that was a secret, sacred, pet name, to be used between themselves, and by that very understanding denied to all others.
She could not but admit to herself that she was bitterly disappointed in her home-coming. She had thought Robert's mother and sisters would meet her on the threshold with kisses and words of welcome. She had yet to learn the paucity of kisses and tender words in a Scotch household. The fact is general, but the causes for this familiar repression are various, and may be either good or evil. Theodora felt them in her case to be altogether unkind. What could she do about it? There was the perilous luxury of complaint to her husband and there was her father's lifelong advice: "Shut up a trouble in your heart, and you will soon sing over it." Which course should she take? She was waiting for a true instinct, a clear, lawful perception, when Robert entered the room.
She looked up with a smile that brought him swiftly to her side, and when he spoke kindly, all her fearing discontent slipped away. Very soon their conversation turned naturally to their apartments. Robert was proud of them, not so much for the money lavished on their adornment, as for the taste he thought himself to have shown. Going here and there in them, he happened to find, on a beautiful cabinet, an old curl paper and a couple of bent hairpins.
"Look here, Dora," he said, and his voice was so full of displeasure, that she rose hastily and went to him.
"What kind of maid have you hired? She ought to know better than to leave these things in your parlor."
"And you ought to know better, Robert," was the indignant answer, "than to suppose these things belong to me. Do I ever put my hair in newspaper twists? Do I ever fasten it with dirty, rusty, wire pins like these?"
"Then tell Ducie to keep her pins and curl papers in her own room."
"They are not Ducie's. She would not put such dreadful things in her pretty hair."
"How do they come here, then?"
"I suppose the people who have been occupying these rooms left them."
"No one has occupied these rooms since they were redecorated and refurnished."
"You are mistaken, Robert. They have been fully occupied for the last three weeks."
"Dora, what are you saying?"
"The truth! Call any of your servants, and they will tell you so."
Without further words