HOTEL BARSTOW
263
self-pitying as did my mother, but he brooded, morosely accusing
himself of heartless infidelities to the traditions of the Catholic
church, of his family, and of his country. My mother believed her–
self to be persecuted ·by everyone she had ever known-with the
exception of Luibka, myself, and a few neighbor women-but he
knew, and was powerless to rectify the fault, that all his torture came
from his own flabby will which swung him like a pendulum between
apathy and fretful indecision. I could see through the clouded win–
dowpane that he was preoccupied with some tangential thought as
he wrote down the specifications of Miss Pride's feet in his note–
book, and I was in mortal terror that he was going to tell her how
long it had been since hie; last confession. When he did speak again,
it was not in self-accusation, but it was from a point far removed
from her question.
He said, "But even so, they don't know good shoes from bad
here."
"If
by 'here' you mean Chichester," returned Miss Pride, "I'm
certain you're right. And while they might know skill when they
saw it, these poor fishermen could not pay for it. But I beg to differ
with you
if
by 'here' you mean something larger. Don't you think,
Mr. Marburg, that in Boston,
we
know the real thing?"
The light which flickered in my father's face was quickly extin–
guished. "It's too late for
that,"
he said.
"You are an obdurate man, sir. My father used to liken your
countrymen to our own Puritans. Therein, he said, lay the greatness
of the nation. I must confess Papa and I never saw eye to eye on your
'greatness' for even as a young lady, I was displeased with your
romancing and your 'earth-spirit' but I can see that some of you are
hard-headed.
If
you were not, how could you work so cleverly?" She
paused, watching my father closely as though she were waiting for
a reply or a confirmation, but neither was forthcoming. She went on.
"If
you came to Boston, you would be out of the doldrums. I recol–
lect the governess to the child of one of my friends. When she came,
poor
Fraulein
Strock, she was timorous and wistful, for she had been
for some time in an establishment in the middle west where her gifts
-a little too Prussian for my liking-were not appreciated in the
least. But she had not been with us, with Boston, that is, for a month
before she had blossomed into what sheJ had been born to be, a first–
rate disciplinarian. I believe you will find we have our feet on the
ground and that we need no divining rods to find our treasures."
My father, no more than I, did not know what to make of her
lecture. Had I been inside with them, I would have inquired how
