For the Major: A Novelette

"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 circumstances you would never have done it, nor under twenty times the same circumstances. 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 pushing 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 gratitude in my love, I do not deny it; but the gratitude 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 fashion – a man's fashion – 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-buttons 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 shillings to the hoard – 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 cushions 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 – harassed – "

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 – "

"Of course he did not; and I try to be just. He was angry, hurt, alarmed; he was hurt that I should treat him as I did – I treated him horribly – and he was alarmed about you. I have never thanked you for what you did that day, Sara – the day he came to warn us; I could not. For I knew how you loathed it – the expedient you took. You only took it because there was no other."

"You are very hard to me, mamma."

"About your feeling I am; how can I help it? But not about the deed: that was noble. In order to help me you let Mr. Owen suppose that you were engaged to a man he – he utterly despised. Well, you helped me. But you hurt him; you hurt Frederick Owen that morning about as deeply as you could." She moved to Sara's side in the darkness, took her hand with a quick grasp and held it in both her own. "And you are so proud," she whispered softly, "that you will never acknowledge that you hurt yourself too; that the sacrifice you then made in lowering yourself by your own act in his eyes was as great a one as a woman can make; for he loves you devotedly, jealously, and you —you know how much you care for him."

Without leaving time for reply, she moved back to her former place, and went on with what she had been saying, as though that sudden soft interpolated whisper had not existed. "Yes – this strange double feeling that I have about Frederick Owen makes me even feel sorry for him at times, sorry to have him suffer as I know he must be suffering, sorry to have him think what I know he must be thinking of you; and also of me. For he thinks that you had a liking for a man whom he considered unworthy to speak your name (oh, detestable arrogance!); he thinks that it was clandestine, that you dared not tell your father; and that I was protecting you in it as well as I could; all this, of course, he must believe. Death has put an end to it, and now it will never be known; this also he is thinking. But, meanwhile, he knows it. And he cannot forget it. He thinks you have in your heart the same feeling still. But I remembered – I did what I could for you by telling him that it was but a fancy of the moment, that it would pass."

"Oh!" murmured Sara, with a quick, involuntary gesture of repulsion; then she stopped.

"I was trying to pave a way out of it for you. You do not like the way, because it includes – includes the supposition that you – But one can never please you, Sara Carroll!"

She rose and began to walk swiftly to and fro across the room, her footsteps making no sound on the thick, faded, old-fashioned carpet – a relic from the days of the Sea Island Carrolls.

"What do you want me to do?" she said, abruptly, as she passed Sara for the fourth time.

"If you are alluding to Mr. Owen, I don't want you to do anything," answered Miss Carroll.

"Oh, you are proud! For the present nothing can be done. But let me tell you one thing – do not be too repellent. 'Tis good in me to warn you, to take his part, when I hate him so – hate him for what he said. Do you suppose I would have had him reading prayers over my poor dead boy after what had passed? Never in the world. No one who despised him should come near him. So I had the Baptist minister. I was a Baptist myself when I was a girl – if I ever was a girl! All this hurts you, of course; but I cannot help it. Be patient. Some day I shall forgive him. Perhaps soon." She had paused in front of Sara as she said this, for they had both been guardedly careful to speak in the lowest tones.

The girl left her place on the sofa; she rose and walked beside her stepmother as she resumed her quick, restless journey to and fro across the floor. They came and went in silence for many minutes. Then Sara put her arm round Madam Carroll, and drew her towards the sofa again.

"Rest awhile, mamma," she said, placing the cushions so that she could lie easily; "you do not know how very tired you are." And Madam Carroll for a half-hour yielded.

"We must bear with each other, Sara," she said, as she lay with her eyes closed. "For amid all our other feelings, there is one which we have in common, our love for your father. That is and always must be a tie between you and me."

"Always," answered Sara.

A little after daylight the Major woke. There had been no return of the fever; he had slept in peace while they kept the vigil near him; his illness was over. As he opened his eyes, his wife came to the bedside; she had just risen – or so it seemed, for she wore a rose-colored wrapper, and on her head a little lace cap adorned with rose-colored ribbon. The Major had not seen the cap before; he thought it very pretty.

"Trying to be old, are you, Madam Carroll?" he said; "old and matronly?"

Sara came in not long afterwards; she, too, was freshly dressed in a white wrapper.

"I have brought you your breakfast, papa," she said.

"Isn't it earlier than usual?" asked the Major, turning his dim eyes towards the window. But he could not see the light of the sunrise on the peaks.

"I am afraid, Major, that you are growing indolent," said Madam Carroll, with pretended severity, as she poured out his tea.

"Indolent?" said the Major – "indolent? Indolence is nothing to vanity. And you and Sara, in your pink and white gowns, are living images of vanity this morning, Madam Carroll."

CHAPTER VIII

AUTUMN at last came over the mountains; she decked them in her most sumptuous colors, and passed slowly on towards the south. The winds followed the goddess, eight of them; they came sounding their long trumpets through the defiles; they held carnival in the high green valleys; they attacked the forests and routed the lighter foliage, but could not do much against the stiff, dark ranks of the firs. They careered over all the peaks; sometimes they joined hands on Chillawassee's head, and whirled round in a great circle, laughing loudly, for half a day; and then the little people who lived on the ground said to each other that it "blew from all round the sky."

They came to Far Edgerley more than once; they blew through Edgerley Street; at night the villagers in their beds heard the long trumpets through the near gorges, and felt their houses shake. But they were accustomed to these autumn visitors; they had a theory, too, that this great sweeping of their peaks and sky was excellent for their mountain air. And upon the subject of their air there was much conceit in Far Edgerley.

When at length the winds had betaken themselves to the lowlands, with the intention of blowing across the levels of Georgia and Florida, and coming round to surprise the northerners at Indian River and St. Augustine, the quiet winter opened in the mountains they had left behind them. The Major had had no return of his October illness; he came to church on Sundays as usual, and appeared at his wife's receptions. It was noticed, although no one spoke of it, that he did not hold himself quite so erect as formerly, and that perhaps his eyesight was not quite so good; but he still remained to his village the exemplar of all that was noble and distinguished, and they admired him and talked about him as much as ever. He was their legend, their escutcheon; so long as they had him they felt distinguished themselves.

The winter amusements began about Christmastime. They consisted principally of the Sewing Society and the Musical Afternoons. To these entertainments "the gentlemen" came in the evening – F. Kenneway, Mr. Phipps, the junior warden, and the rector, when they could get him. A Whist Club had, indeed, been proposed. There was a double motive in this proposal. There were persons in the congregation who considered whist-playing a test of the best churchmanship; these were secretly desirous to see the test applied to the new rector, or rather the new rector applied to it. But the thoughtful Mrs. Greer, having foreseen this very possibility at an early date in the summer, had herself sounded the rector upon the subject, and brought back a negative upon the end of her delicate conversational line. She had asked him if he thought that the sociability engendered by card-tables at small parties could, in his opinion, counterbalance the danger which familiarity with the pasteboard squares might bring to their young men (Phipps and Kenneway); and whether he himself, at moments of leisure, and when he wished to rest from intellectual fatigue, of which, of course, he must have so much, ever whiled away the time with these same gilded symbols, not with others, but by himself.

Owen, who had not for the moment paid that attention to the eloquence of Mrs. Greer which he should have done, did not understand her. He had received an impression of cymbals. This was no surprise to him; he had found Mrs. Greer capable of the widest range of subjects.

"I mean the painted emblems, you know – cards," explained Mrs. Greer; "clubs, diamonds, and spades, Mr. Owen. Nor should we leave out hearts. I was referring, when I spoke, to solitaire. But there is also whist. Whist is, in its way, a climate by itself – a climate of geniality."