Husband and wife -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction
Simon's jealousy of St. Ives was now at an end, or so he believed. He
had never felt that Rachel really cared for Emil, and now he told
himself with a sigh of thankfulness, that his hatred of the inventor no
longer existed. During Rachel's illness, for which he looked upon
himself as in a measure responsible, the agony of contrition he had
experienced had obliterated the other torture. St. Ives he had never
liked, nor did he like him now; but when he learned that the building
in which Emil's workshops were located was to be extensively altered
during the summer, and that these repairs would make it an
inconvenient, if not an impossible place in which to carry on important
work, he had acted at once.
In his present state of mind it had been a simple, even a gratifying
thing for him to arrange to have Emil and all that pertained to the
organ attachment, transferred temporarily to the gardener's cottage on
this country estate. This action, defining his own position as nothing
else could, had brought with it an immeasurable sense of relief.
Morbidly constituted as he was, his own position in the matter was of
paramount importance to Simon, and so engrossed was he in this supposed
release from jealousy that Emil and Annie figured as scarcely more than
the necessary factors for carrying out a course of conduct he had
outlined. That his mood was overstrained; that it was one of those
misleading, reactionary impulses to which sensitive peaceful natures
are particularly prone, he never suspected. For the sake of
maintaining his present lofty attitude, Simon was capable of blinding
himself for a time to anything that might again threaten his repose.
By taking down a partition in the gardener's cottage, the organ had
been installed, and Emil and Annie were living there now in great
comfort. Filled with reproaches and recriminations, the visit which
Annie had paid to her parents had been a mistake, but this the young
girl did not acknowledge; nor did she confess that, despite her
unhappiness with her husband, she was not able to live without him.
When Mrs. St. Ives had recovered from the illness which had attacked
her, Annie had rejoined Emil very simply; now in these new conditions
she was even growing fresh and pretty. Simon, who had not been
unmindful of the young wife when he decided to make the arrangement,
could not help seeing that Annie was happier; and, for that matter,
that Emil was happier, too. The inventor whistled shrilly over his
work, and whenever he heard him, Simon was conscious of the expansive
feeling that accompanies a generous action.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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