SHOWS THE TYRANNY OF WEAKNESS
Three days later the bay horse returned at a gallop with Jonathan Gay
in the saddle. At the head of the steps Kesiah was standing, and she
answered the young man's anxious questions with a manner which she tried
to make as sympathetic as the occasion required. This effort to adjust
her features into harmony with her feelings had brought her brows
together in a forbidding scowl and exaggerated the harsh lines between
mouth and chin.
"Am I in time?" he asked in a trembling voice, and his hand reached out
to her for support.
"The immediate danger is over, Jonathan," she answered, while she led
him into the library and closed the door softly behind them. "For hours
we despaired of her recovery, but the doctors say now that if there is
no other shock, she may live on for months."
"I got your note last night in Washington," he returned. "It was
forwarded by mail from Applegate. Is the doctor still with her?"
"No, he has just gone. The rector is there now. She finds him a great
comfort."
"It was so sudden, Aunt Kesiah--she appeared well when I left her. What
caused the attack?"
"A talk she had had with Mr. Chamberlayne. It seems he thought it best
to prepare her for the fact that your Uncle Jonathan left a good deal
of his property--it amounts to an income of about ten thousand a year,
I believe, to Reuben Merryweather's granddaughter when she comes of age.
Of course it wasn't the money--Angela never gave that a thought--but
the admission that the girl was his illegitimate daughter that struck so
heavy a blow."
"But surely she must have suspected---"
"She has never suspected anything in her life. It is a part of her
sweetness, you know, that she never faces an unpleasant fact until it is
literally thrust on her notice. As long as your uncle was so devoted to
her and so considerate, she thought it a kind of disloyalty to inquire
as to the rest of his life. Once I remember, twenty years ago, when that
poor distraught creature came to me--I went straight to Angela and tried
to get her to use her influence with her uncle for the girl's sake. But
at the first hint, she locked herself in her room and refused to let
me come near her. Then it was that I had that terrible quarrel with Mr.
Gay, and he hardly spoke to me again as long as he lived. I believe,
though, he would have married Janet after my talk with him except for
Angela's illness, which was brought on by the shock of hearing him speak
of his intention." She sighed wonderingly, her anxious frown deepening
between her eyebrows. "They both seemed to think that in some way I was
to blame for the whole thing," she added, "and your uncle never forgave
me. It's the same way now. Mr. Chamberlayne spoke quite angrily to me
when he saw the effect of his interview. He appeared to think that I
ought to have prevented it."
"Could it have been kept from her, do you suppose?"
"That looked impossible, and of course, he broke it to her very gently.
He also, you know, has all his life had a sentiment about Angela, and
that, I think is why he never married. He told me once that she came
nearer than any woman he had ever seen to representing every man's
ideal."
"What I can't understand is why she should have been so upset by the
discovery?"
"Well, she was very fond of your uncle, and she has cherished quite
romantically the memory of his affection for her. I think--for that
is Angela's way--that he means much more to her dead than he did
living--and this, she says, has blackened the image."
"But even then it seems incomprehensible that it should have made her
really so ill."
"Oh, you don't know her yet, Jonathan. I remember your uncle used to say
that she was more like a flower than a woman, and he was always starting
alarms about her health. We lived in a continual panic about her for
several years, and it was her weakness, as much as her beauty, that gave
her her tremendous power over him. He was like wax in her hands, though
of course he never suspected it."
The tread of Mr. Mullen was heard softly on the staircase, and he
entered with his hand outstretched from the starched cuff that showed
beneath the sleeve of his black broadcloth coat. Pausing on the rug, he
glanced from Kesiah to Jonathan with a grave and capable look, as
though he wished them to understand that, having settled everything
with perfect satisfaction in the mind of Mrs. Gay, he was now ready to
perform a similar office for the rest of the household.
"I am thankful to say that I left your dear mother resting peacefully,"
he observed in a whisper. "You must have had a distressing journey, Mr.
Gay?"
"I was very much alarmed," replied Gay, with a nervous gesture as if he
were pushing aside a disagreeable responsibility. "The note took three
days to find me, and I didn't know until I got here whether she was
alive or dead."
"It is easy to understand your feelings," returned the rector, still
whispering though Gay had spoken in his natural voice. "Such a mother
as yours deserves the most careful cherishing that you can give her. To
know her has been an inspiration, and I am never tired of repeating that
her presence in the parish, and occasional attendance at church, are
privileges for which we should not forget to be thankful. It is not
possible, I believe, for any woman to approach more closely the perfect
example of her sex."
"Perhaps I had better go up to her at once. We are deeply grateful to
you, Mr. Mullen, for your sympathy."
"Who would not have felt?" rejoined the other, and taking up his hat
from the table, he went out, still treading softly as though he were
walking upon something he feared to hurt.
"Poor mother! It's wonderful the way she has with people!" exclaimed
Gay, turning to Kesiah.
"She's always had it with men--there's something so appealing about her.
You'll be very careful what you say to her, Jonathan."
"Oh, I'll not confess my sins, if that's what you mean," he responded as
he ascended the staircase.
The room was fragrant with burning cedar, and from the dormer-windows,
latticed by boughs, a band of sunlight stretched over the carpet to the
high white bed in which his mother was lying. Her plaintive blue eyes,
which clung to him when he entered, appeared to say; "Yes, see how they
have hurt me--a poor frail creature." Above her forehead her hair, which
was going grey, broke into a mist, and spread in soft, pale strands over
the pillow. Never had her helpless sweetness appealed so strongly to his
emotions, as when she laid her hand on his arm and said in an apologetic
whisper:
"Dear boy, how I hated to bring you back."
"As if I wouldn't have come from the end of the world, dearest mother,"
he answered.
He had fallen on his knees by her bed, but when Kesiah brought him a
chair, he rose and settled himself more comfortably.
"I wanted you, dear, but if you knew how I dreaded to become a drag
on you. Men must be free, I know--never let me interfere with your
freedom--I feel such a helpless, burdensome creature."
"If you could only see how young and lovely you look even when you
are ill, you would never fear becoming a burden. In spite of your grey
hairs, you might pass for a girl at this minute."
"You wicked flatterer!--but, oh, Jonathan, I've had a blow!"
"I understand. It must have been rough."
"And to think how I always idealized him!--how I had believed in his
love for me and cherished his memory! To discover that even at the
last--on his deathbed--he was thinking of that woman!"
She wept gently, wiping her eyes with a resigned and suffering gesture
on the handkerchief Kesiah had handed her. "I feel as if my whole
universe had crumbled," she said.
"But it was no affront to you, mother--it all happened before he saw
you, and was only an episode. Those things don't bite into a man's life,
you know."
"Of course, I knew there had been something, but I thought he had
forgotten it--that he was faithful to his love for me--his spirit
worship, he called it. Then to find out so long after his death--when
his memory had become a part of my religion--that he had turned back at
the end."
"It wasn't turning away from you, it was merely an atonement. Your
influence was visible even there."
"I am sorry for the child, of course," she said sadly, after weeping a
little--"who knows but she may have inherited her mother's character?"
"The doctor said you were to be quiet, Angela," remarked Kesiah, who had
stood at the foot of the bed in the attitude of a Spartan. "Jonathan, if
you begin to excite her, you'd better go."
"Oh, my boy, my darling boy," sobbed Mrs. Gay, with her head on his
shoulder, "I have but one comfort and that is the thought that you are
so different--that you will never shatter my faith in you. If you only
knew how thankful I am to feel that you are free from these dreadful
weaknesses of men."
Cowed by her helplessness, he looked down on her with shining eyes.
"Remember the poor devil loved you, mother, and be merciful to his
memory," he replied, touched, for the first time, by the thought of his
uncle.
"I shall try, Jonathan, I shall try, though the very thought of evil is
a distress to me," she replied, with a saintly look. "As for the girl, I
have only the tenderest pity for the unfortunate creature."
"That's like you, mother."
"Kesiah says that she has behaved very well. Didn't you say so, Kesiah?"
"Yes, Mr. Chamberlayne told me that she appeared perfectly indifferent
when he spoke to her. She even remarked, I believe, that she didn't see
that it concerned her."
"Well, she's spirit enough. Now stop talking, mother, I am going."
"God bless you, my darling boy--you have never failed me."
Instead of appeasing his conscience, the remark completed his descent
into the state of disenchantment he had been approaching for hours. The
shock of his mother's illness, coming after three days of marriage, had
been too much for his unstable equilibrium, and he felt smothered by
an oppression which, in some strange way, seemed closing upon him from
without. It was in the air--in the faded cretonne of the room, in
the grey flashes of the swallows from the eaves of the house, in the
leafless boughs etched delicately against the orange light of the
sky. Like most adventurers of the emotions, he was given to swift
despondencies as well as to vivid elations, and the tyranny of a mood
was usually as absolute as it was brief. The fact was there while it
lasted like the physical sensation of hunger or gratification. When it
departed he seldom spurred his imagination to the pursuit of it.
"So it's over," he said under his breath, as he looked through the
lacework of ivy on the small greenish panes to the desolate November
fields, "and I've been a damn fool for the asking!"
At the end of the week Blossom returned to the mill, and on the
afternoon of her arrival, Gay met her in the willow copse by the brook.
To the casual observer there would have appeared no perceptible change
in his manner, but a closer student of the hearts of lovers might
have drawn an inference from the fact that he allowed her to wait
five minutes for him at the place of meeting. True, as he explained
passionately, his mother had asked for him just as he was leaving the
house, and it was clearly impossible that he should refuse his mother!
That he was still ardent for Blossom's embraces was evident to her
glance, but the affair was settled, the mystery solved, and there was no
longer need that he should torment himself. That the love of his kind is
usually a torment or nothing had not, at this stage, occurred to either
of the lovers. He was feeling strongly that, having conducted himself
in so honourable a manner there was nothing more to be expected of him;
while she assured her heart that when his love had proved capable of so
gallant a sacrifice, it had established the fact of its immortality. The
truth was that the fire still burned, though the obstacles, which had
supplied fuel to the flames, were consumed, and a pleasant warmth rather
than a destroying blaze was the result. Had Gay sounded the depths of
his nature, which he seldom did, he would have discovered that for him
passion was a kind of restlessness translated into emotion. When the
restlessness was appeased, the desire in which it had revealed itself
slowly evaporated.
"How is your mother?" was Blossom's first eager question, "oh, I do hope
she is better!"
"Better, yes, but we're still awfully anxious, the least shock may kill
her--Aunt Kesiah and I are walking on pins and needles. How are you,
Beauty? Did you enjoy your visit?"
He kissed her lips, and she clung to him with the first expression of
weakness she had ever shown.
"How could I when it ended like that?"
"Well, you're married anyway--that ought to satisfy you. What does it
feel like?"
"I can't believe it--and I haven't even any ring."
"Oh, the ring! If you'd had it, you'd have dropped it about somewhere
and let out the secret."
"I wish it had been in church and before a clergyman."
"Are you trying to make me jealous again of the Reverend Orlando? I'm an
old married man now, and it is hopeless."
"Do you really feel married, Jonathan?"
"The deuce I don't! If I did I'd be galloping down the turnpike."
"I wonder why you did it?" she questioned a little wistfully, "you take
it so lightly."
"I could only take it lightly after I'd done it--that's why, darling."
"If I could believe in it I shouldn't mind the secrecy," she said, "but
I feel so wicked and underhand that I hardly dare hold up my head before
the folks at home. Jonathan, when do you think we may come out and
confess?"
For a moment he did not answer, and she watched the frown gather slowly
between his eyebrows.
"There, there, Blossom, don't begin that already," he responded
irritably, "we can't make it public as long as my mother lives--that's
out of the question. Do you think I could love you if I felt you had
forced me to murder her? Heaven knows I've done enough--I've married you
fair and square, and you ought to be satisfied."
"I am satisfied," she replied on the point of tears, "but, oh, Jonathan,
I'm not happy."
"Then it's your own fault," he answered, still annoyed with her. "You've
had everything your own way, and just because I get in trouble and come
to you for sympathy, you begin to nag. For God's sake, don't become a
nagging woman, Blossom. A man hates her worse than poison."
"O Jonathan!" she cried out sharply, placing her hand on her breast as
though he had stabbed her.
"Of course, I'm only warning you. Your great charm is poise--I never saw
a woman who had so much of it. That's what a man wants in a wife,
too. Vagaries are all right in a girl, but when he marries, he wants
something solid and sensible."
"Then you do love me, Jonathan?"
"Don't be a goose," he rejoined--for it was a question to which he had
never in his life returned a direct answer.
"Of course, I know you do or you wouldn't have married me--but I wish
you'd tell me so--just in words--sometimes."
"If I told you so, you'd have no curiosity left, and that would be bad
for you. Come, kiss me, sweetheart, that's better than talking."
She kissed him obediently, as mildly complaisant as she had once been
coldly aloof. Though the allurement of the remote had deserted her, she
still possessed, in his eyes, the attraction of the beautiful. If the
excitement of the chase was ended, the pleasure of the capture was still
amply sufficient to make up the difference. He laughed softly as he
kissed her, enjoying her freshness, her surrender, her adoration, which
she no longer attempted to hide.
When he parted from her several hours afterwards, he had almost
recovered the casual gaiety which had become his habit of mind. Life
was too short either to wonder or to regret, he had once remarked, and
a certain easy fatalism had softened so far the pricks of a disturbing
conscience.
The walk from the pasture to the house led through a tangle of shrubbery
called by the negroes, the Haunt's Walk, and as he pushed the leafless
boughs out of his way, a flitting glimpse of red caught his eye beyond
a turn in the path. An instant later, Molly passed him on her way to the
spring or to the meadows beyond.
"Good day, Mr. Jonathan," she said, while her lips curved and she looked
up at him with her arch and brilliant smile.
"Good day to yourself, cousin," he responded gaily, "what is your
hurry?"
As he made a movement to detain her, she slipped past him, and a minute
afterwards her laugh floated back.
"Oh, there's a reason!" she called over her shoulder.
A sudden thought appeared to strike him at her words, and turning
quickly in the path, he looked after her until she disappeared down the
winding path amid the tangle of shrubbery.
"Jove, she is amazingly pretty!" he said at last under his breath.