For the Major Part 11

"Papa," said Sara, "now that we are all here, wouldn't it be a good time to look at the new photographs?" The photographs were views of English scenery which she had sent for; the Major had been in England, and liked to relate reminiscences of his visit. He was interested at once.

"Certainly," he answered, with alacrity, "an excellent idea. Scar, get the boxes."

Scar brought the boxes, and gave one of them to his mother; as he did so his hand touched hers. "Why, mamma, are you so cold?" he said, in surprise. "It is still summer, mamma, and quite warm."

"It is nothing," answered Madam Carroll; "only a pa.s.sing chill. It is over now."

CHAPTER VII.

A few days after the funeral of the musician the Major was taken ill. It was not the failure of strength, which often came over him, nor the confused feeling in the head, of which he never spoke, but which his wife always recognized when she saw him sitting with his forehead bent and his hand over his eyes. This time he had fever, and was slightly delirious; he seemed also to be in pain. Madam Carroll and Sara did not leave him; they were in deep anxiety. But in the evening relief came; the fever ceased, and he fell into a quiet sleep. The two women kissed him softly, and, still anxious, stole into the next room to keep the watch, leaving the door open between the two. A shaded night-lamp faintly illumined the room where he lay, but the outer one was in darkness. Scar had gone to bed, and the house was very still; they could hear the murmur of the brook through the open window; for although it was now towards the last of October, it was still summer in that favored land. The outer room was large, and they sat on a sofa at its far end; they could talk in low tones without danger of disturbing the Major, whose sleeping face they could see through the open door.

The moon rose. Madam Carroll went into the Major's room and closed the dark curtains, so that the increasing light should not waken him; when she came back the silver radiance had reached Sara, and was illuminating her face and figure as she leaned against the cus.h.i.+ons of the sofa. "He is sleeping naturally and restfully now," said the wife, as she took her seat again; "his face has lost that look of pain it has had all day. But do you know that you yourself are looking far from well, Sara?"

"I know it. And I am ashamed of it. When I see you doing everything, and bearing everything, without one outward sign, without the least change in your face or expression, I am ashamed that I have so little self-control."

"Have you been supposing, then, that all this unvarying pink and white color was my own? Have you never suspected that I put it on?--that it was fict.i.tious? I began in July--you know when. It was for that reason that I altered the hours of our receptions from afternoon to evening: candle-light is more favorable, you know. I also began then to wear a little lace veil. You think me about thirty-five, don't you? I am forty-eight. I was thirty-five when I married the Major. All this golden hair would be heavily streaked with gray if I should let it alone."

"Do not feel obliged to tell me anything, mamma."

"I prefer that you should know; and it is also a relief to me to tell,"

answered Madam Carroll, her eyes on the dark outline of the mountains, visible in the moonlight through the open window. "My poor little Cecilia pa.s.sed easily for six, she was so small and frail, like Scar; in reality she was over ten. The story was, you know, that I had been married the first time at sixteen. That part was true; but nineteen years had pa.s.sed instead of seven, as they supposed. You are wondering, probably, why I should have deceived your father in such little things, matters unimportant. There had been no plan for deceiving him; it had been begun before I met him; he simply believed what the others believed. And later I found that they were not unimportant to him--those little things; they were important. He thought a great deal of them. He thought a great deal of my youth; youth and ignorance of the world, child-like inexperience, had made up his ideal of me, and by the time I found it out, his love and goodness, his dear protection, had become so much to me that I could not run the risk of losing them by telling him his mistake. I know now that I need not have feared this, I need not have feared anything where he was concerned; but I did not know then, and I was afraid. He saw in me a little blue-eyed, golden-haired girl-mother, unacquainted with the dark side of life, trusting, sweet.

It was this very youth and childlike look which had attracted him, man of the world as he was himself, and no longer young. I feared to shatter his dream. In addition, that part did not seem to me of any especial consequence; I knew that I should be able to live up to his ideal, to maintain it not only fully, but longer, probably, than as though I had been in reality the person he supposed me to be; for now it would be a purpose, determinedly and carefully carried out, and not mere chance. I knew that I could look the same for years longer; I have that kind of diminutive prettiness which, with attention, does not change; and I should give the greatest attention. I felt, too, that I should always be entirely devoted to him. Gallant and handsome as he was, he was not young, and I knew that I should care for him just the same through illness, age, or infirmity; for I have that kind of faithfulness (many women haven't) and--I loved him.

"And as to my little dead boy, there again there had been no plan for deceiving him. People had supposed from my young face that I could have been married but a year or two, and that Cecilia had been my only child.

It was imagined from my silence that my marriage had not been a happy one--they said I had that look--and therefore no one questioned me; they took it all for granted. I said that my husband was dead. But I said no more. I had decided, for Cecilia's sake, to keep the secret of the manner of his death: why should her innocent life be clouded by the story of her father? Besides, could I go about proclaiming, relating, his--shortcomings? He was my husband, though he had cared so little for me; he was my husband, though he had taken from me my darling little son. And about that son, my poor little drowned boy, I simply had never been able to speak; the hurt was too deep; I could not have spoken without telling what I had decided not to tell, for where he was concerned I could not have invented. Thus I had kept the secret at first from loyalty to my dead husband, and for the sake of my little girl; I kept it later, Sara, because I was afraid. The Major loved me--yes; but would he continue to love me if he should know that instead of being the youthful little woman barely twenty-three, I was over thirty-five? that instead of being inexperienced, unacquainted with the dark side of life, I knew all, had been through all? that instead of the dear little girl's being my only child, I was the mother of a son who, had he lived, would have been a man almost full-grown--would he continue to love me through all this? I was afraid he would not.

"Remember that _I_ had not planned his idea of me, I had had nothing to do with it; he had made it himself. Remember, too, that such as it was, I knew I could live up to it, that he need never be disappointed, that I could fully realize his dream. In that, at least, I have succeeded. I have lived up to it, I have _been_ it, so long, that there have even been times when I have seemed to myself to really be the pretty, bright little wife, thirty years younger than her husband, that I was pretending to be. But that feeling can never come again.

"I am not excusing myself to you, Sara, in all this; I am only explaining myself. Under the same circ.u.mstances you would never have done it, nor under twenty times the same circ.u.mstances. But I am not you; I am not anybody but myself. That lofty kind of vision which sees only the one path, and that the highest, is not mine; I always see all the shorter paths, lower down, that lead to the same place--the cross-cuts. I can do little things well, and I can do a great many of them; I have that kind of small and ever-present cleverness. But the great things, the wide view--they are beyond me. And do not forget, too, how much it was to me. It was everything. I was alone in the world with my delicate little girl, who needed so much that I could not give--luxuries, constant care, the best advice. I had strained every nerve, made use of all my poor little knowledge and my trifling accomplishments; I had worked as hard as I possibly could; and the result of all my efforts was that I had barely succeeded in getting our bread from day to day, with nothing laid up for the future, and the end of my small strength near at hand. For I was not fitted for that kind of struggle, and I knew that I was not. I could work and plan and accomplish, and even, I believed, successfully, but only when sheltered--sheltered in a home, no matter how plain, protected from actual contact with the crowd. In a crowd there is always brutality; in a crowd I lost heart. What were my small plans, which always concerned themselves with the delicate little things and details, in the great pus.h.i.+ng struggle for bread? It was when I was fully realizing the hopelessness of all my efforts, when the future was at its blackest, and I could not look at Cecilia without danger of tears--for they had told me that something might be done for her during the next year--for her poor spine--and I had not the money to pay for it--it was then that your father's love came to me like a gift straight down from heaven. But do not think that I did not love him in return--really love him for himself, not for what he gave me. I did. I do. I had suffered so much, my life had been so crushed under sorrow and trouble, that, save my love for Cecilia, I seemed to myself to have no feelings left; I thought they were all dead. But when the Major began to love me, when he spoke--oh, then I knew that they were not! I felt that I had never known what real happiness was until that day; and my whole heart turned to him. There was grat.i.tude in my love, I do not deny it; but the grat.i.tude was for my little girl--the love was all for him. It has never lessened, Sara, from that hour.

"It seemed to me such a wonderful thing that he should love me! It gave me such a strange surprise that he should care for my little doll-like face and curls. But when I found that he did care for them, how precious they became to me, how hard I tried to keep them pretty for his sake!

And, for his sake, I not only kept them pretty, but I made them prettier. I was a far prettier woman after the Major married me than I was before; I had a motive to be so. Ah, yes, I loved him, Sara! May you never have a comprehension of the ill-usage, the suffering, I had been through! but still, without such knowledge, you will hardly be able to understand the depth of my love for him. When he first saw me, I was making an effort to seem comparatively cheerful; I was spending a few weeks with Mrs. Upton, the wife of an army officer, at Mayberry, and I did not want her to suspect my inward despair. Mrs. Upton had known me at Natchez while I was trying to keep a little school there, and when I came to Mayberry to try again, she asked me to come and spend a few weeks with her before I began. She knew that I was poor--she did not know how poor--and she had always been fond of Cecilia, who was--surely I may say it now--a very beautiful child. Think of it all, Sara; remember the needs of the child; remember what he was himself, and--that I loved him."

"I do think of it. And I do not blame you," Sara Carroll answered, speaking not as the daughter, but as one woman speaks to another. "You have made my father's life a very happy one."

"I have tried; but it has always been in my own narrow way, the little things of each day and hour. It was the only way I knew."

There was a silence; the room had grown dark, as a broad bank of cloud came slowly over the moon.

"Cecilia is with her brother to-night," said Madam Carroll, after a while; "Cecilia is a woman now, a woman in heaven. She was twenty-two on the 11th of September. I wonder what they are saying to each other! He used to be so fond of her, so proud when I let him hold her for a few minutes in his strong little arms! They will be sure to meet and talk together; don't you think so?"

"How can we know, mamma?" said Sara, sadly.

"We cannot. Yet we do," answered Madam Carroll. "I know it; I am sure of it." She was silent for a moment; then went on speaking softly in the darkness, as if half to herself. "His poor clothes, Sara--oh, so neglected and worn!--I could not bear it when I saw them. I had asked him about them more than once, and he always said that they were in good order--that is, good enough. But I pressed him; I wanted to see with my own eyes; and at last I succeeded in persuading him to bring a few of them late in the evening when no one would see him, and put them under the hedge near the gate; then, when everybody was asleep, I stole down to get them, took them into the sitting-room, lighted the lamp, and looked at them. In 'good order' he had called them, poor boy, when they were almost rags. I cried over those clothes, Sara; I could not help it; they were the only tears I shed. It showed so plainly what his life had been. I could not help remembering in what careful order were all his little frocks and jackets when he was my dear little child. After that I made him bring me a few things once a week. I gave him a little old carpet-bag of mine to put them in. I used to mend them in my dressing-room, with the door locked, whenever I had a little leisure (I took only my leisure), and then I carried them down and put them under the hedge when I knew he was coming. It was a comfort to me to do it; but he didn't care anything about the mending himself--he said so. He had lived so long with his poor things neglected and ragged that he didn't know any other way. Yet he tried, too, after his fas.h.i.+on--a man's fas.h.i.+on--to dress well. Don't you remember his red silk handkerchiefs and socks, and his silk-lined umbrella? Poor boy, he had the wish; but not the money or the knowledge. How could he learn, living where and as he had? That watch-chain and ring he had when he came back--they were only gilt."

The grieving story was no longer uttered aloud, the low tones ceased.

But the mother was pursuing the train of thought in her own mind.

After a while she spoke again. "I was so unwilling to tell you, Sara, to burden you with it all! Nothing could have made me do it but the fear of--of that which afterwards _did_ happen--death. For when he came back after that illness, and I saw how changed he was, how weak, and knew that I had nothing to help him with, then I felt desperate. I knew that he ought to return to that warmer climate, and at once; I had nothing of my own, and the Major's money, of course, I would not take. Yours is not his, and so I came to you; I knew that you would help me to the utmost of your power--as you have. But if there had been any possible alternative, anything else in the world that I could have done--and I thought over everything--I want you to believe that I should never have come to you."

"It was too much for you to bear alone, mamma."

"No, it was not that; I could have borne much more. I have borne it. But what I could not bear was that he should be ill. I had exhausted every means I had when he went away the first time; there was nothing left. I had given all I had--all, excepting things which the Major himself had given me. I had even stretched a point, and added the watch your uncle Mr. Chase sent me when I was married. There was the little breast-pin, also, that Mrs. Upton gave me at the same time. Then there was the gold thimble and the sleeve-b.u.t.tons you sent me from Longfields, and the gold pencil Senator Ashley gave me one Christmas. I even put in my little coral necklace. It had belonged to Cecilia, and was the only thing I had left from her baby days; it was of little, almost no value intrinsically, as I knew, because I had tried to sell it more than once when she and I were so poor; but if it could add even a few s.h.i.+llings to the h.o.a.rd--so small!--that was to take him back to the climate he needed, I was glad to have it go. I tell you this only to show you that absolute necessity, and that alone, drove me to you."

"I am so glad you came, mamma!--glad that I was able to help you, or at least that you let me try."

"Yes, you were glad to help me; you were very kind and good," answered the Major's wife. Then, sitting erect, and with a quicker utterance, "But you were always afraid of him. You never trusted him. You were always afraid that he would be traitorous, that he would go to your father, _I_ was never afraid; I knew that he would never betray; he cared too much for me, for his poor mother; for although he had not been with me since he was a child, in his way he loved me. He was never selfish, he was only unthinking, my poor, neglected boy! But _you_ never gave him any mercy; you suspected him to the last."

"Oh, no, mamma; I tried--"

"Yes, you tried. But you were always Miss Carroll, always scornful at heart, cold. You endured him; that was all. And do not think he did not see it, was not hurt by it! But I did not mean to reproach you, Sara; it is not just. I will stop this minute." She brought one hand down into the palm of the other with a decided little sound, and held them thus pressed tightly together for several minutes. Then, letting them fall apart, she leaned her head back against the cus.h.i.+ons again. "You were thinking of your father," she said, in a gentler tone; "that was the cause of all, of your coldness, your fear. You were afraid that Julian would do something to distress him, to disturb his peace. But he would never have done that. You did not know him, Sara; you never in the least comprehended him. But I must not keep going back to that. Rather tell me--and speak truthfully, it can make no difference now--do you think there was any time, after my poor boy's first coming, when we could have safely told the Major?"

"No," answered the Major's daughter, "there was no time. He could not have borne it; the surprise, the shock, would have been too great."

"So it seemed to me. But I wanted your opinion too. You see, about me there is more than there used to be in his mind, or, rather, in his fancy: he doesn't distinguish. What were once surmises he now thinks facts, and he fully believes in them. He has constructed a sort of history, and has woven in all sorts of imaginary theories in the most curious way. For instance, he thinks that my mother was one of a family well known in New York--so they tell me, at least; I know little of New York--the Forsters of Forster's Island. My mother was plain Mary Foster, from Chester, Vermont, or its neighborhood, a farmer's daughter. In the same way he has built up a belief that my father was an Episcopal clergyman, and that he was educated in England. My father was a Baptist missionary; he was a man of fair education (he educated me), but he was never in England in his life. These are only parts of it, his late fancies about me. To have brushed them all away, to have told him that they were false, that I had all along been deceiving him, to have bewildered him, given him so much pain--my dear gray-haired old Major!

Oh, Sara, I could never have done it! 'A son?' he would have said, perplexed. 'But there is only little Scar.' It would have been cruelty, he believes in me so!" Her voice quivered, and she stopped.

"He has never had more cause to believe in you than now, mamma--to believe in your love for him; he does not know it, but some day he will.

You have been so unswerving in your determination to make secure, first of all, his happiness and tranquillity, so unmindful of your own pain, that it seems to me, his daughter, as if you had never been so faithful a wife to him as now."

"Oh, say it again!" said Madam Carroll, burying her face in her hands.

"I did my best, or at least I tried; but I have been so--tortured--hara.s.sed--"

The Major stirred in the next room; they hurried softly in. He was awake; he turned his head and looked at his wife as she stood beside the bed. "You and Sara both here?" he said. "Did I go to bed, then, very early this evening?" He did not wait for reply, but went on. "I have had such a beautiful dream, Marion; it was about that drive we took when we were first married--do you remember? Through the woods near Mayberry.

There was that same little stream that we had to cross so many times, and the same bank where you got out and gathered wild violets, and the same spring where we drank, and that broken bridge where you were so frightened--do you remember?"

"Yes," answered his wife, brightly; "and I remember, too, that you lost your way, and pretended that you had not, and wouldn't ask, for fear I should suspect it."

The Major laughed, feebly, but with enjoyment. "I didn't want _you_ to know that _I_ didn't know everything--even the country roads," he answered. "For I was old enough to be your father, and you were such a little thing; I had my dignity to keep up, you see." He laughed again.

"That spring was very cold, wasn't it?" he said, and he lay thinking of it for a minute or two. Then slowly his eyes closed; he had fallen asleep. They waited, but he did not waken. His sleep was peaceful, and they went back again to their watch in the outer room.

"It is two o'clock, mamma. Won't you lie down for a while? I am strong, and not at all tired; if he should waken, I will at once call you."

"I could not sleep," answered Madam Carroll, taking her former seat. "We could neither of us sleep, I fancy, while there was the least danger of the fever's returning--as the doctor said it might."

"I thought perhaps you might rest, even if you did not sleep."

"I shall never be any more rested than I am now," answered the Major's wife. After a silence of some length she spoke again; "In all this we should not forget Mr. Owen," she said, as though taking up a task which must be performed. "I feel sure that he is suffering deeply. You know what he must be thinking?"

"So long as he does not speak, what he thinks is of small consequence,"

said Miss Carroll.

"It may be so to you. It is not to him." She paused. "I can remember that I once liked him," she went on, in a monotonous tone. "And I can even believe that I shall like him again. But not now, not now. Now it is too near--those cruel words he spoke about my boy."

"He did not know--"