MRS. MARKHAM'S VIEWS.
In the gathering twilight, in a parlor at the Markham mansion, sat
Julia by the piano, resting her head on one hand, while with the other
she brought little ripples of music from the keys; sometimes a medley,
then single and prolonged notes, like heavy drops of water into a
deep pool, and then a twinkling shower of melody. She was not sad, or
pensive, or thoughtful; but in one of these quiet, sweet, and grave
moods that come to deep natures--as a cloud passing over deep, still
water enables one under its shadow to see into its depths. Her mother
stood at an open window, inhaling the evening fragrance of flowers,
and occasionally listening to the wild note of the mysterious
whippoorwill, that came from a thicket of forest-trees in the
distance.
The step of her father caught the ear of the young girl, who sprang up
and ran towards him with eager face and sparkle of eye and voice.
"Oh, papa, the trunks came this afternoon, with the fashion-plates,
and patterns, and everything, and all we girls--Nell, Kate Fisher,
Miss Flora Walter, Pearlie, Ann, and all hands of us--have had a
regular 'opening.' We went through with them all. The cottage bonnet
is a love of a thing, and I am going to have it trimmed for myself.
Sleeves are bigger than ever, and there were lots of splendid things!"
"And so Roberts has suited you all, for once, has he?" said the Judge,
passing an arm around her small waist.
"Roberts! Faugh, he had nothing to do with it. Aunt Mary selected
them all herself. They are the latest and newest from Paris--almost
direct."
"Does that make them better?"
"Well, I don't know that there is anything in their coming from Paris,
except that one likes to know that they come from the beginning-place
of such things. Now if they had been made in Boston, New York, or
Baltimore, one would not be certain they were like the right thing;
and now we know they are the real thing itself. Do you understand?"
"Oh, yes--as well as a man may; and it is quite well put, too, and
I don't know that I ever had so clear an idea of the value of things
from a distance before."
"Well, you see, when a thing comes clear from the farthest off,
we know there ain't anything beyond; and when it comes from the
beginning, we don't take it second hand."
"I see; but why do you care, you girls in this far-off, rude region?"
"Mamma, do you hear that? Here is my own especial father, and your
husband, asking me, a woman, and a very young woman too, for a
reason."
"It is because you are a very young one that he expects you to give
a reason. Perhaps he thinks you will not claim the privilege of our
sex."
"Well, I won't. Now, then, Papa Judge, this is not a far-off, rude
region, and you see that the French ladies want these styles and
fashions, and all that; well, if they want them, we want them too."
"Now I don't quite see. How do you know they want them? Perhaps they
are sent here because they don't want them; and, besides, why should
a backwoods girl in Ohio want what a high-born lady in the French
capital wants?"
"Because the American girl is a woman; and, besides, the court must
hear and decide, and not ask absurd questions."
"And who is to see you in French millinery, here in the woods?"
"Oh, bless its foolish man's heart, that thinks a woman dresses to
please its taste, when it hasn't any! We dress to please ourselves and
plague each other--don't you know that? and we ain't pleased with poky
home-made things."
"Julia! Mother," appealed the Judge, with uplifted hands, to Mrs.
Markham, "where did this young lady get her notions?"
"From the common source of woman's notions, as you call them, I
presume--her feelings and fancies; and she is merely letting you see
the workings of a woman's mind. We should all betray our sex a hundred
times a day, if our blessed husbands and fathers had the power to
understand us, I fear."
"And don't we understand you?"
"Of course you do, as well as you ever will. My dear husband, don't
you also understand that if you fully comprehended us, or we you, we
should lose interest in each other? that now we may be a perpetual
revelation and study to each other, and so never become worn and
common?"
"There, Papa Judge, are you satisfied--not with our arguments, but
with us?"
"The man who was not would be unreasonable and--"
"Man-like," put in Julia. "Let me sing you my new song."
A piano was a novelty in Northern Ohio. Julia played with a real skill
and expression, and her father, though no musician, loved to listen,
and more to hear her sing, with her clear, strong, sweet voice, and so
she played and sang her song.
When she had finished, "By the way," remarked her father, "I
understand that our travelled young townsman, who has just returned
from foreign parts, was at the post-office this afternoon, and perhaps
you met him."
"Whom do you mean?" asked Julia.
"Your mother's pet, Bart Ridgeley."
"Now, papa, that is hardly kind, after what you said of him the other
day. He is not mother's pet at all. She is only kind to him, as to
everybody. Indeed, he don't seem to me like anybody's pet, to be
patted and kept in-doors when it rains, and eat jellies, and be nice.
I saw him at the store a moment; he was very civil, and merely asked
after mamma, and went out."
"Did you ask him to call and see mamma?" asked her father a little
gravely.
"Not at all. The truth is, papa, after what you said I could not ask
him, and was hardly civil to him."
"Was it unpleasant to be hardly civil to him?"
"No; though I like to be civil to everybody. You know I have seen
little of him since I came home, and when I have, he was sometimes
silent and distant, and not like what he was before I went away."
"You find him improved in appearance and manners?" persisted the
Judge.
"Well, he was always good-looking, and had the way of a gentleman.
Miss Walters seemed quite taken with him, and was surprised that he
had grown up here in the woods."
Her father was silent a moment, and the subject was changed. Mrs.
Markham was attentive to what was said of poor Bart, but made no
comment at the time.
* * * * *
In their room, that night, in her sweet, serious way, she said to
her husband, "Edward, I do not want to say a word in favor of Barton
Ridgeley. I do not ask you to change your opinion of him or your
course towards him; but I wish to ask if it is necessary to discuss
him, especially with Julia?"
"Why?"
"Well, can it be productive of good? If you are mistaken in your
estimate of him, you do him injustice, and in any event you will call
her attention to him, and she may observe and study him; and almost
any young woman who should do that might become interested in him."
"Do you think so? Men don't like him."
"Is that a reason why a woman would not?"
"Have you discovered any reason to think that Julia cares in the least
for him?"
"Julia is young, and, like the women of our family, develops in these
respects slowly; but, like the rest of us, she will have her own
fancies some time, and you know"--with a still softer voice--"that
one of them left a beautiful home, and a circle of love and luxury, to
follow her heart into the woods."
"Yes, and thank God that she did! Roses and blessings and grace came
with you," said the Judge, with emotion. "But this boy--what is he
to us, or what can he ever be? He is so freaky, and unsteady, and
passionate, and flies off at a word, and goes before he is touched. He
will do nothing, and come to nothing."
"What can he do? Would you really have him buy an axe and chop
cord-wood, or work as a carpenter, or sell tape behind the counter?
Are there not enough to do all that work as fast as it needs to be
done? Is there not a clamorous need of brain-work, and who is there to
do it? Who is to govern, and manage, and control twenty years hence?
Look over all the young men whom you know, and who promises to be fit
to lead? Think over those you know in Cleveland, or Painesville, or
Warren. Is somebody to come from somewhere else? Think of your own
plans and expectations. Who can help you? I see possibilities in this
wayward, passionate, hasty, generous youth. He is a tender and devoted
son, and I am glad he came back; and nobody knows how he may be pushed
against us and others."
"Well," said the Judge, after a thoughtful pause, "what can I do? What
would you have me do--change myself, or try to change him?"
"I don't know," thoughtfully: "I think there is nothing you can do
now. I would wish you to cultivate a manner towards him that would
leave it in your power to serve him or make him useful, if occasion
presents. He needs a better education, and perhaps a profession. He
should study law. He has a capacity to become a very superior public
speaker--one of the first. I don't think there is much danger of his
forming bad habits or associations. He avoids and shuns everything of
that kind. You know he deeded his share of his father's land to his
brother, to provide a home for his mother, and I presume will remain,
both from choice and necessity, with her for the present."
The Judge mused over her words. He did not tell her of having met and
left Barton the other side of the Chagrin; nor did he disclose fully
the dislike he felt for him, or the fears he may have entertained at
the idea of any intimacy between him and Julia. His wife mused also
in her woman's way. She, too, would have hesitated to have Barton
restored to the old relations of his boyhood. While she knew of much
to admire and hope for in him, she knew also that there was much
to cause anxiety, if not apprehension. In thinking further, she was
inclined to call upon his mother, whom she much esteemed for her
strong and decisive traits of character, soft and womanly though
she was. Cares and anxieties had kept her from association with her
neighbors, among whom, as she knew, she seldom appeared, except on
occasions of sickness or suffering, or when some event seemed
to demand the presence of a deciding woman's mind and will. She
remembered one or two such times in their earlier forest life, when
Mrs. Ridgeley had quietly assumed her natural place for a day, to
go back to her round of widowed love, care and toil. She would make
occasion to see her, and perhaps find some indirect way to be useful
to both mother and son.