MOTHER AND SON.
That afternoon Mrs. Forrest seemed so much better that even her husband
began to hope, when he saw the color on her cheek, and the increased
brightness of her eyes. But she was not deceived. She knew the nature of
her disease, and that she had not long to live. So what she would say to
her son must be said without delay. Accordingly, after lunch, she bade
Rossie send him to her, and then leave them alone together. Everard
obeyed the summons at once, though there was a shrinking fear in his
heart as he thought, “Now I must tell her of Josey,” and wondered what
she would say. Since his drive with Beatrice it did not seem half so
easy to talk of Josephine, and that marriage ceremony was very far away,
and very unreal, too. His mother was propped up on her pillows, and
smiled pleasantly upon him as he took his seat beside her.
“Everard,” she began, “there are so many things I must say to you about
the past and the future, and I must say them now while I have the
strength. Another day may be too late.”
He knew to what she referred, and with a protest against it, told her
she was not going to die; she must not; she must live for him, who would
be nothing without her.
Very gently she soothed him into quiet, and he listened while she talked
of all he had been, and all she wished him to be in the future.
Faithfully, but gently, she went over with his faults, one by one,
beseeching him to forsake them, and with a bursting heart he promised
everything which she required, and told her again of the reform already
commenced.
“God bless you, my boy, and prosper you as you keep this pledge to your
dying mother, and whether you are great or not, may you be good and
Christlike, and come one day to meet me where sorrow is unknown,” she
said to him finally; then, after a pause, she continued: “There is one
subject more of which, as a woman and your mother, I must speak to you.
Some day you will marry, of course——”
“Yes, mother,” and Everard started violently, while the cold sweat stood
in drops about his lips, but he could say no more then, and his mother
continued: “I have thought many times who and what your wife would be,
and have pictured her often to myself, and loved her for your sake; but
I shall never see her, when she comes here I shall be gone, and so I
will speak of her now, and say it is not my wish that you should wait
many years before marrying. I believe in early marriages, where there is
mutual love and esteem. Then you make allowance more readily for each
other’s habits and peculiarities. I mean no disrespect to your father,
he has been kind to me, but I think he waited too long; there were too
many years between us; my feelings and ideas were young, his
middle-aged; better begin alike for perfect unity. And, my boy, be sure
you marry a lady.”
“A lady, mother?” Everard said, wondering if his mother would call
Josephine a lady.
“Yes, Everard,” she replied, “a lady in the true sense of the word, a
person of education and refinement, and somewhere near your own rank in
life. I never believed in the Maud Muller poem, never was sorry that the
judge did not take the maiden for his wife. He might, perhaps, never
have blushed for _her_, but he would have blushed for her family, and
their likeness in his children’s faces would have been a secret
annoyance. I do not say that every _mesalliance_ proves unhappy, but it
is better to marry your equal, if you can, for a low-born person, with
low-born tastes, will, of necessity, drag you down to her level.”
She stopped a moment to rest, but Everard did not speak for the fierce
struggle in his heart. He _must_ tell her of Josephine, and could he say
that she had no low-born tastes? Alas, he could not, when he remembered
things which had dropped from her pretty lips so easily and naturally,
and at which he had laughed as at something spicy and daring. His mother
would call them coarse, with all her innate refinement and delicacy, and
a shiver ran through him as he seemed to hear again the words “I
pronounce you man and wife.” They were always ringing in his ears,
louder sometimes than at others, and now they were so loud as almost to
drown the low voice which after a little went on:
“I do not believe in parents selecting companions for their children,
but surely I may suggest. You are not obliged to follow my suggestion. I
would have your choice perfectly free,” she added, quickly, as she saw a
look of consternation on his face, and mistook its meaning. “I have
thought, and think still, that were I to choose for you, it would be
Beatrice.”
“Beatrice! Bee Belknap! mother,” and Everard fairly gasped. “Bee Belknap
is a great deal older than I am.”
“Just a year, which is not much in this case. She will not grow old
fast, while you will mature early; the disparity would never be thought
of,” Mrs. Forrest said. “Beatrice is a little wild, and full of fun and
frolic, but under all that is a deep-seated principle of propriety and
right, which makes her a noble and lovely character. I should be willing
to trust you with her, and your father’s heart is quite set on this
match. I may tell you now that it has been in his mind for years, and I
wish you to please him, both for his sake and yours. I hope you will
think of it, Everard, and try to love Beatrice; surely it cannot be hard
to do that?”
“No, mother,” Everard said, “but you seem to put _her_ out of the
question entirely. Is she to have no choice in the matter, and do you
think that, belle and flirt as she is, she would for a moment consider
_me_, Ned Forrest, whom she calls a boy, and ridicules unmercifully? She
would not have me, were I to ask her a thousand times.”
“I think you may be wrong,” Mrs. Forrest said. “It surely can’t be that
you love some one else?” and she looked at him searchingly.
Now was the time to speak of Josephine, if ever, and while his heart
beat so loudly that he could hear it, he said, “Yes, mother, I do like
some one else;—it is a young girl in Holburton, where I staid last
summer. She is very beautiful. This is her picture,” and he passed
Josephine’s photograph to his mother, who studied it carefully for two
or three minutes; then turning her eyes to her son she said: “She is
beautiful, so far as features and complexion are concerned, but I am
greatly mistaken in you if the original of this face can satisfy you
long.”
“Why, mother, what fault have you to find with her? Isn’t she a born
lady?” Everard asked, a little scornfully, for he was warming up in
Josephine’s defense.
“Don’t misunderstand what I mean by a lady,” Mrs. Forrest said. “Birth
has not all to do with it. Persons may be born of the lowliest
parentage, and in the humblest shed, but still have that within them
which will refine, and soften, and elevate till the nobility within
asserts itself, and lifts them above their surroundings. In this case,”
and she glanced again at the picture, “the inborn nobility, if there
were any, has had time to assert itself, and stamp its impress upon the
face, and it has not done that.”
“For pity’s sake, mother, tell me what you see to dislike so much in
Josephine!” Everard burst out, indignantly.
His mother knew he was angry, but she would not spare him, lest a great
misfortune should befall him. She saw the face she looked upon was very
fair, but there was that about it from which she shrank intuitively, her
quick woman instinct telling her it was false as fair, and not at all
the face she would have in her boy’s home; so she answered him
unhesitatingly:
“Shall I tell you the kind of person I fancy this girl to be, judging
from her picture? Her face is one to attract young men like you, and she
would try to attract you, too, and the very manner with which she would
do it would be the perfection of art. There is a treacherous, designing
look in these eyes, so blue and dreamy, and about the mouth there is a
cruel, selfish expression which I do not like. I do not believe she can
be trusted. And then, it may be a minor matter, I do not like her style
of dress. A really modest girl would not have sat for her picture with
so much exposure of neck and arms, and so much jewelry. Surely you must
have noticed the immense chain and cross, and all the show of bracelets,
and pins, and ornaments in her hair.”
Everard had thought of it, but he would not acknowledge it, and his
mother continued:
“The whole effect is tawdry, and, excuse me for putting it so strongly,
but it reminds me of the dollar store, and the jewelry bought there. She
cannot have the true instincts of a lady. Who is she, Everard, and where
does she live?”
Everard was terribly hurt and intensely mortified, while something told
him that his mother was not altogether wrong in her estimation of the
girl, whose picture did resemble more a second-rate actress tricked out
in her flashy finery than a pure, modest young girl; but he answered his
mother’s question, and said:
“She lives in Holburton, New York, and her name is Josephine Fleming. I
boarded for three weeks last summer with her mother, Widow Roxie
Fleming, as the people call her.”
He spit the last out a little defiantly, feeling resolved that his
mother should know all he knew about the Flemings, be it good or bad,
but he was not prepared for the next remark.
“Roxie? Roxie Fleming? Is she a second wife, and is there a step
daughter much older than Josephine?”
“Yes; but how did you know it, and where have you seen them?” Everard
asked, eagerly, his anger giving way to his nervous dread of some
development worse even than the dollar jewelry, which had hurt him
cruelly.
“Years ago, when I was a young girl, we had in our family a cook, Roxie
Burrows by name, competent, tidy, and faithful in the discharge of her
duties, but crafty, designing and ambitious. Our butcher was a Mr.
Fleming, a native of Ireland, and a very respectable man, whose little
daughter used sometimes to bring us the steak for breakfast in the
morning, and through whom Roxie captured the father, after the mother
died. She was so sorry for the child, and mended her frocks, and made
much of her till the father was won, when, it was said, the tables were
turned, and little Agnes mended the frocks and darned the socks, while
Roxie played the lady. I remember hearing of the birth of a daughter,
but I was married about that time, and knew no more of the Flemings
until a few years later, when I was visiting in Boston, and mother told
me that he was dead, and Roxie had gone with the children to some place
West. I am sure it must be the same woman with whom you boarded. Has she
sandy hair and light gray eyes, with long yellow lashes?”
“Yes, she has; it is the same,” Everard replied, with a feeling like
death in his heart as he thought how impossible it was now to tell his
mother that Josephine was his wife.
How impossible it was that she would ever be reconciled to the daughter
of her cook and butcher, who added to her other faults the enormity of
wearing dollar jewelry! And I think that last really hurt Everard the
most. On such points he was very fastidious and particular, and more
than once had himself thought Josey’s dress too flashy, but the glamour
of love was over all, and a glance of her blue eyes, or touch of her
white hands always set him right again and brought him back to his
allegiance. But the hands and the eyes were not there now to stand
between him and what his mother had said, and he felt like crying out
bitterly as he took back his photograph and listened a few moments
longer, while his mother talked lovingly and kindly, telling him he must
forgive her if she had seemed harsh, that it was for his good, as he
would one day see. He would forget this boyish fancy in time and come to
wonder at his infatuation. Forget it! with those words ever in his ears,
“I pronounce you man and wife.” He could _not_ forget, and it was not
quite sure that he would do so if he could. Josey’s face and Josey’s
wiles had a power over him yet to keep him comparatively loyal. He had
loved her with all the intensity of a boy’s first fervent passion, which
never stopped to criticise her manner, or language, or style of dress,
though, now that his eyes were opened a little, it occurred to him that
there might be something flashy in her appearance, and something told
him that the massive chain and cross, so conspicuous on Josephine’s
bosom, came from that store in Pittsfield, where everything was a
dollar, from an immense picture down to a set of spoons. And his mother
had detected it, by what subtle intuition he could not guess; and had
traced her origin back to a butcher and a cook! Well, what then? Was
Josey the worse for that? Was it not America’s boast that the children
of butchers, and bakers, and candlestick-makers should stand in the high
places and give rule? Certainly it was, and his mother herself had said
it was neither birth nor blood which made the lady. It was a nobleness
from within asserting itself without, and stamping its impress upon its
possessor. And had Josephine this inborn refinement and nobility, or had
she not? That was the point which troubled the young man as he went out
from his mother’s presence, and sought a little arbor in a retired part
of the grounds where he would be free to think it out. With his head,
which was aching terribly, bowed upon his hands, he went over all the
past as connected with Josephine, detecting here and there many a word
and act which, alas, went far toward proving that his mother’s estimate
of her was not very wrong. But how did his mother divine it? Had women
some secret method of reading each other unknown to the other sex. Could
Beatrice read her, too, from that photograph, and what would Bee’s
verdict be? He wished he knew; wished he could show it to her
incidentally as the photograph of a mere acquaintance. And while he was
thus thinking he heard in the distance Bee’s voice, and lifting up his
head he saw her coming down the long walk gayly and airily, in her
pretty white muslin dress, with a bit of pink coral in her ears and in
the lace bow at her throat. One could see that she was a saucy,
fun-loving, frolicsome girl, with opinions of her own, which sometimes
startled the staid ones who walked year by year in the same rut, but she
was every whit a lady, and looked it, too, as she came rapidly toward
Everard, who found himself studying and criticising her as he had never
criticised a woman before. She was not like Josephine, though wherein
the difference consisted he could not tell. He only knew that the load
at his heart was heavier than ever, and that he almost felt that in some
way he was aggrieved by this young girl, who, when she saw him, hastened
her steps and was soon at his side.
“Oh, here you are,” she said, “Rossie told me I should find you in the
garden. I came to inquire after that broken head, for which I feel
responsible. Why, Ned,” she continued, calling him by the old familiar
name of his boyhood, “how white you are! I am afraid it was more serious
than I supposed;” and she looked anxiously into his pale, worn face.
His head was aching terribly, but he would not acknowledge it. He only
said he was a little tired, that the cut on his forehead was nothing,
and would soon be well; then, making Beatrice sit down beside him, he
began to ask her numberless questions about the people of Rothsay,
especially the young ladies. Where was Sylvia Blackmer, and where was
Annie Doane, and, by the way, where was Allie Beadle, that pretty little
blonde, with the great blue eyes, who used to sing in the choir.
“By Jove, she was pretty,” he said, “except that her hair was a little
too yellow. She looks so much like a girl east that some of the college
boys rave about, only this girl, Miss Fleming, is the prettier of the
two. I shouldn’t wonder if I had her photograph somewhere. She had a lot
taken and gave me one. Yes, here it is,” he continued, after a feint of
rummaging his pocket-book. “What do you think of her?” he asked, passing
the picture to Beatrice, and feeling himself a monster of duplicity and
deception.
Bee took the card, and looking at it a moment, said:
“Yes, she is very pretty; but you don’t want anything to do with that
girl. She is not like you.”
It was the old story repeated, and Everard felt nettled and annoyed, but
managed not to show it, as he replied:
“Who said I did want anything to do with her? But honestly, though, what
do you see in her to dislike?”
“Nothing to dislike,” Bee said, “I do not fancy her make-up, that’s all.
She looks as if she would wear cotton lace!” and having said what in her
estimation was the worst thing she could say of a woman, Beatrice handed
him back the picture, which he put up silently, feeling that he could
not tell Beatrice of Josey.
He could not tell anybody unless it was Rossie, and he did not believe
he cared to do that now, though he would like to show her the picture
and hear what she had to say. Would she see dollar jewelry and cotton
lace in the face he thought so divine? He meant to try her, and after
Beatrice was gone he strolled off to a shaded part of the grounds, where
he came upon Rossie watering a bed of fuchsias. She was not sylph-like
and graceful, or clad in airy muslin, like Beatrice. She was unformed
and angular, and her dress was a dark chintz, short enough to show her
slender ankles, which he had once teasingly called pipe-stems, and her
thick boots, which were much too large, for she would not have her feet
pinched, and always wore shoes a size and a-half too big. A clean white
apron, ruffled and fluted, and a white sun-bonnet, completed her
costume. Josephine would have called her “homely,” if she had noticed
her at all, and some such idea was in Everard’s mind as he approached
her; but when, at the sound of his footsteps, she turned and flashed
upon him from beneath the cape bonnet those great, brilliant eyes, he
changed his mind, and thought: “Won’t those eyes do mischief yet, when
Rossie gets a little older.”
She was glad to see him, and stopped watering her flowers while she
inquired after his head, and if Miss Belknap found him.
“Yes, she did,” he said, adding, as he sat down in a rustic chair: “Bee
is handsome and no mistake.”
“That’s so,” Rossie replied, promptly, for Bee Belknap’s beauty was her
hobby. “She is the handsomest girl I ever saw. Don’t you think so?”
Here was his opportunity, and he hastened to seize it.
“Why, no,” he said, “not the very handsomest I ever saw. I have a
photograph of a girl I think prettier. Here she is.” And he passed
Josephine’s picture toward Rossie, who set down her watering-pot, and
wiping her soiled hands, took it as carefully as if it had been the
picture of a goddess.
“Oh, Mr. Everard!” she cried, “she is beautiful; more so than Miss
Beatrice, I do believe. Such dreamy eyes, which look at you so kind
of—kind of coaxingly, somehow; and such lovely hair! Who is she, Mr.
Everard?”
“Oh, she’s one of the girls,” Everard answered, laughingly, and
experiencing a sudden revulsion of feeling in Josey’s favor at Rossie’s
opinion of her.
Here was one who could give an unprejudiced opinion; here was a champion
for Josey; and in his delight, Everard thought how, with his first spare
money, he would buy Rossie a gold ring, as a reward of merit for what
she had said of Josey. Her next remarks, however, dampened his ardor a
little.
“She’s very rich, isn’t she?” Rossie asked; and he replied:
“No, not rich at all. Why do you think that?”
“Because she has such a big chain and cross, and such heavy bracelets
and ear-rings, and is dressed more than Miss Belknap dresses at a grand
party,” Rossie said: and Everard answered her quickly:
“Rossie, you are a little thing, not much bigger than my thumb, but you
have more sense than many older girls. Tell me, then, if you know, is it
bad taste to be overdressed in a picture, and is it a crime, a sin, to
wear bogus jewelry?”
She did not at all know at what he was aiming, and, pleased with the
compliment to her wisdom, answered, with great gravity:
“Not a crime to wear flash jewelry,—no. I wore a brass ring once till it
blacked my finger. I wore a glass breast-pin, too, which cost me
twenty-five cents, till your mother said it was foolish, and not like a
lady. But I do not think it’s a crime; it’s only _second-classy_. A
great many do it, and I shouldn’t wonder a bit if,”—here the little lady
looked very wise, and lifted her forefinger by way of emphasis—“I
shouldn’t wonder a bit if this chain and cross were both shams, for now
that I look at her more closely, she looks like a sham, too.”
Rosamond’s prospect for a ring was gone forever, and Everard’s voice
trembled as he took back his picture, and said:
“Thank you, Rossie, for telling me what you thought. Maybe she is a
sham. Most things are in this world, I find.”
Then he walked rapidly away, while Rossie stood looking after him and
wondering if he was angry with her, and who the young girl was, and if
he really liked her.
“I hope not,” she thought, “for though she is very handsome, there is
something about her which does not seem like Mr. Everard and Miss
Beatrice. They ought to go together; they must; it is so suitable;” and
having settled the future of Beatrice and Everard to her own
satisfaction, the little girl resumed her work among the flowers, and
did not see Everard again until suppertime, when he looked so pale and
tired that even his father noticed it and asked if he were sick.
The cut over his eye was paining him, he said, and if they would excuse
him he would retire to his room early, and should probably be all right
on the morrow. The night was hot and sultry, and even the light breeze
from the river seemed oppressive and laden with thunder, and for hours
Everard lay awake thinking of the future, which stretched before him so
drearily with that burden on his mind. How he wished that it might prove
a dream, from which he should awake to find himself free once more,—free
to marry Josephine if he chose, and he presumed he should, but not till
his college days were over, and he could take her openly and publicly as
a true man takes the woman he loves and honors. How he hated to be a
sneak and a coward, and he called himself by these names many times, and
loathed himself for the undefinable something creeping over him, and
which made him shrink even from Josephine herself as Josephine. He said
he did not care a picayune for the butcher and the cook, and he did not
care for the dollar jewelry and cotton lace, though he would rather his
mother and Bee had not used the opprobrious terms, but he did care for
the _sham_ of which his mother had spoken, and which even Rossie had
detected. Was Josey a sham, and if so, what was his life with her to be?
Alas for Everard! he was only just entering the cloud which was to
overshadow him for so many wretched years. At last he fell into a
troubled sleep, from which he was aroused by the noise of the storm of
rain which had swept down the river and was beating against the house,
but above the storm there was another sound, Rossie calling to him in
tones of affright, and bidding him hasten to his mother, who was dying.
Of all which followed next Everard retained in after life but a vague
consciousness. There was a confused dressing in the dark, a hurrying to
his mother, whose white face turned so eagerly toward him, and whose
pallid lips were pressed upon his brow as they prayed God to keep him
from evil, and bring him at last to the world she was going to. There
were words of love and tender parting to the stricken husband and
heart-broken Rossie, who had been to her like a daughter, and whom she
committed to the care of both Everard and his father, as a precious
legacy left in their charge. Then, drawing Everard close to her, she
whispered so low that no one else could hear:
“Forgive me if I seemed harsh in what I said of Josephine. I only meant
it for your good. I may have been mistaken; I hope I was. I hope she is
good, and true, and womanly, and if she is, and you love her, her birth
is of no consequence, none whatever. God bless you, my child, and her,
too!”
She never spoke again, and when the early summer morning looked into the
room, there was only a still, motionless figure on the bed, with pale
hands folded upon the bosom, and the pillow strewn with flowers, which
Rosamond had put there. Rosamond thought of everything; first of the
dead, then of the stern judge, who broke down entirely by the side of
his lost Mary, and then of Everard, who seemed like one stunned by a
heavy blow. With the constantly increasing pain in his head, blinding
him even more than the tears he shed, he wrote to Josephine:
“Oh, Josey, you will be sorry for me when I tell you mother is dead. She
died this morning at three o’clock, and I am heart-broken. She was all
the world to me. What shall I do without my mother?”
He posted the letter himself, and then kept his room, and for the most
part his bed, until the day of the funeral, when, hardly knowing what he
was doing, or realizing what was passing around him, he stood by his
mother’s grave, saw the coffin lowered into it, heard the earth rattling
down upon it, and had a strange sensation of wonder as to whom they were
burying, and who he was himself. That puzzled him the most, except,
indeed, the question as to where the son was, the young man from Amherst
College, who drove such fast horses, and smoked so many cigars, and
sometimes bet at cards. “He ought to be here seeing to this,” he
thought; and then, as a twinge of pain shot through his temple, he
moaned faintly, and went back to the carriage, in which he was driven
rapidly home.
There was a letter from Josephine in his room, which had come while he
was at his mother’s grave. He recognized the handwriting at once, and
with a feeling as if something were clutching his throat and impeding
his breath, he took it up, and opening it, read his first letter from
his wife.