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 cushions 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 fictitious? 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 passed 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 passed 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 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."
[Illustration: "I AM AFRAID, MAJOR, THAT YOU ARE GROWING INDOLENT."]