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."
This was a phrase of Madam Carroll's. Mrs. Greer had collected a large
assortment of phrases from the overflow of the Farms. These she
treasured, and dealt out one by one; her conversation was richly adorned
with them. She had excellent opportunities for collecting, as Madam
Carroll had long been in the habit of telling her any little item which
she wished to have put in circulation through the village in a certain
guise. She always knew that her exact phrase would be repeated, but not
as hers; it would be repeated as if it were original with the lady who
spoke it. This was precisely what Madam Carroll intended. To have said
herself, for instance, that the new chintz curtains of her drawing-room
combined delicacy and durability, and a bower-like brightness, was too
apparent; but for Mrs. Greer to say it (in every house on Edgerley
Street) was perfectly proper, and accomplished the same result. The
whole town remarked upon the delicacy and the durability and the
bower-like brightness; and the curtains, which she had made and put up
herself at small expense, took their place among the many other
peculiarly admirable things possessed by the Farms. Upon the present
occasion, however, Mrs. Greer gave Madam Carroll's name to the phrase
she had repeated; she thought it would have more influence. "Yes, that
is what our dear Madam Carroll used to call it--a climate of geniality,"
she said, looking at the rector with an inquiring smile.
But, ignoring the phrase of the Farms, none the less did Owen bring out
his negative; with the gilded symbols he did not amuse himself, either
alone or in company.
Armed, therefore, with this knowledge, Mrs. Greer was ready; she met the
project of the Whist Club in its bud, and vanquished it with a Literary
Society, whose first four meetings she gave herself, with a delicate
little hot supper thrown in. The Whist Club could not stand against
this, Miss Honoria Ashley, who was its chief supporter, offering only
apples and conversation. But a large cold apple on a winter night is not
calculated to rouse enthusiasm; while, as to conversation, everybody
knew that hot coffee promoted it. So the Literary Society conquered, and
the whist test was not, for that season at least, applied to the
churchmanship of the rector.
During these winter months Owen kept himself constantly busy. It was
thought that he worked too hard. He looked tired; sometimes, young and
strong as he was, he looked worn. There was a good deal of motherly
anxiety about this; some sisterly, too. Ferdinand Kenneway said that he
felt towards him like a brother. But Owen pursued his own course,
unmindful of these sympathetic feelings. He came to Madam Carroll's
receptions as usual, but did not stay long: he was the last to come and
the first to go. He called at the Farms, though not often; and when he
went there, he did not go alone.
So the winter passed on and departed, and spring came. Then a sorrow
fell upon the little mountain town. Early one soft morning in March,
when the cinnamon-colored tassels were out on the trees, and the air was
warm and gray, with the smell of rain in it, word came down Edgerley
Street, passing from house to house, that Carroll Farms had been visited
in the night: the Major, their Major, had wakened quiet and content, but
like a little child; the powers of his mind had been taken from him.
Every one had loved him, and now there was real mourning. They all said
to each other and to themselves that they should never look upon his
like again. The poor nation had greatly retrograded since his day; even
their state was not what it had been; under these circumstances it could
not be expected that the world should soon produce another Scarborough
Carroll. They went over all the history of his life: his generous
sharing of his fortune with his half-brother; his silence under the
forgetfulness of that half-brother's children; his high position and
many friends in the old army; his brilliant record in the later army,
their own army, vanquished, but still dear to them, the army of the
South; they told again the story of his gallant ride round the enemy's
forces in the Valley, of his charge up the hill at Fredericksburg, his
last brave defence of the bridge on the way to Appomattox. His wounds
were recalled, his shattered arm, the loss of his money, so
uncomplainingly borne; they spoke of his beautiful courtesy to every
one, and of his unfailing kindness to all the poor. And then, how
handsome he was, how noble in bearing and expression, how polished in
manner! such a devoted husband and father, so pure a patriot! Their dear
old Major: they could not say enough.
The junior warden kept his room all day; he could not bear to hear it
talked about. Then the next morning out he went at an early hour to see
everybody he knew, and he told them all how very imprudent Carroll had
always been, recklessly so, recklessly. He was up and down Edgerley
Street all day, swinging his cane more than usual as he walked, thus
giving a light and juvenile air to his arms and shoulders, which was
perhaps somewhat contradicted by the uncertain tread of his little old
feet. In the afternoon Frederick Owen went to the Farms; for the first
time since the preceding October he went alone. Miss Carroll was in the
drawing-room when he came in; she was receiving a visit of general
inquiry and condolence from the three Miss Rendleshams. They went away
after a while, and then, before he had had time to speak--as he stood
there realizing that he had not been alone with her since that day, now
six months in the past, when she had told him of her engagement to
Dupont--he saw through the open door of the drawing-room the small
figure of Madam Carroll. She had not come down to see the three Miss
Rendleshams. But she did come down to see the rector. She came straight
to him, with her quick, light step. "I heard that you were here, and
came down. I am anxious to see you, Mr. Owen. Not to-day, but soon. I
thought I would come down myself and ask you; I did not want to write a
note."
"At any time you will name," answered Owen. He had risen as she entered.
Miss Carroll had seemed to him unchanged, save that her eyes showed that
she had been crying; but the Major's wife, he said to himself, with
almost awe-struck astonishment--the Major's wife, had he met her
elsewhere, he should hardly have known. Her veil of golden hair, no
longer curled, was put plainly back, and fastened in a close knot
behind; her eyes, the blue eyes he had always thought so pretty, looked
tired and sunken and dim, with crows'-feet at their corners; all her
lovely bloom was gone, and the whole of her little faded face was a
net-work of minute wrinkles. She was still small and slender, and she
still had her pretty features; but this was an old woman who was talking
to him, and Madam Carroll had been so young.
"It will not be for some days yet, I think," she was saying. "I shall
wait until the doctor has made up his mind. He wants more time, though I
want none; when he does make it up, it will be as mine is now. But I
prefer to wait until he sees clearly; will you ask him from day to day
what he thinks, and, when he has decided, then will you come?"
"Yes," replied Owen. "But do you mean that the Major--"
"I mean that the Major is in no immediate danger; that he will continue
about the same. He will not grow better, but neither will he grow much
worse. He may be brighter at times, but he will not regain his memory;
that is gone. But we shall not lose him, Mr. Owen, that is our great
happiness. We shall not lose him, Sara and I, as we had at first
feared."
Two tears rolled down her cheeks as she spoke. "It is because I am so
thankful," she said, wiping them away. Her long lace-bordered sleeves
had been turned back, and Owen was struck with the old, withered look of
her small wrists and hands.
"I could not have borne it to lose him now," she went on, as if
explaining. "You may think that existence such as his will be is no
blessing, nothing to be desired for him or for me. But he is not
suffering, he is even happy as a child is happy, and he knows me. He
would be content himself to wait a little, if he could know how much it
was to me, how much to have him with me, so that I can devote myself to
him, devote myself entirely."
"You have always done that, Madam Carroll," said Owen, touched by her
emotion.
"You will come, then--on whatever day the doctor makes up his mind," she
said, controlling herself, and returning to her subject.
Here Miss Carroll spoke. "Isn't it better not to make engagements for
the present, mamma?" she said, warningly. "You will overtax your
strength."
"It is overtaxed at this moment far less than it has been for many a
long month," answered Madam Carroll, as it seemed to Owen, strangely.
She passed her hand over her forehead, and then, as if putting herself
aside in order to consider her companions for a moment, she looked first
at Sara, then turned and looked at Owen. "Do not stay any longer now,"
she said to him, gently, in an advising tone. He obeyed her, and went
away.
On the tenth day after this the doctor, whose conclusions, if slowly
made, were sure, announced his decision: it tallied exactly with that of
Madam Carroll. The Major was in no present danger; his physical health
was fairly good; his condition would not change much, and he might
linger on in this state for several years. And then the Far Edgerley
people, knowing that no more pain would come to him, and that he was
tranquil and even happy, that he recognized his wife, and that she gave
to him the most beautiful and tender devotion--then these Far Edgerley
people were glad and thankful to have him with them still; not wholly
gone, though lying unseen in his peaceful room, which faced the west, so
that the sunset could shine every day upon the quiet sunset of his life.
And they thought, some of them, that thanksgiving prayers should be
offered for this in the church. And they all prayed for him at home,
each family in its own way.
On the afternoon of the day when the doctor had made up his mind,
Frederick Owen went to the Farms. Madam Carroll came down to see him;
she took him to the library, now unused, and when they had entered, she
closed the door. "Will you sit here beside me?" she said, indicating a
sofa opposite the window. Again he was struck by the great--as it seemed
to him, the marvellous--change in her. She looked even older than
before; her hair was put back in the same plain way; there was the same
absence of color, the same tired look in her eyes, the same fine
net-work of wrinkles over all her small face; but added to these there
was now a settled sadness of expression which he felt would never pass
away. He missed, too, all the changing inflections and gestures, the
pretty little manner and attitudes, and even the pronunciation, which he
had supposed to belong inseparably to her, which he had thought entirely
her own. He missed likewise, though unconsciously, the prettiness of the
bright little gowns she had always worn; she was dressed now in black,
without color or ornament.
She seemed to divine his thoughts. "The Major can no longer see me," she
said, quietly; "that is, with any distinctness. It is no longer anything
to him--what I wear."
He had taken the seat she had offered; she sat beside him, with her
hands folded, her eyes on the opposite wall. "I have a story to tell
you," she said. "But I can make no prefaces; I cannot speak of feelings.
I hope for your interest, Mr. Owen, even for your sympathy; but if I get
them it will be accomplished by a narrative of facts alone, and not by
any pathos in the words themselves. I got beyond pathos long ago. My
name was Marion More. My father was a missionary in the Southwest--the
exact localities I need not give. At sixteen I married. My father died
within the year; my mother had died long before. My first child was a
son, born when I was seventeen; I called him Julian. Later there came to
me a daughter, my little Cecilia. When she was still a baby, and Julian
was seven, my husband, in a brawl at a town some miles from our house,
killed a man who was well known and liked in the neighborhood; they had
both fired, and the other man was the better shot, but upon this
occasion his ball happened to miss, and my husband's did not. I was
sitting at home, sewing; the baby was in the cradle at my feet, and
Julian was playing with his little top on the floor. My husband rode
rapidly into the yard on his fast black horse, Tom, sprang down, came
into the house, and went into the inner room. He soon came back and went
out. He called Julian. The child ran into the yard; then hurried back to
get the little overcoat I had made for him. 'Where are you going?' I
said. 'To ride with papa,' he answered, and, eager as he was to go, he
did not forget to come and kiss me good-by. Then he ran out, and I heard
them start; I heard Tom's hoofs on the hard road farther and farther
away; then all was still. But less than half an hour afterwards there
was noise enough; the garden was full of armed men. The whole
country-side were out after him. They hunted him for three days. But he
knew the woods and swamps better than they did, and they could not find
him. They knew that he would in time make for the river, and they kept a
watch along shore. He reached it on the fourth day, at a lonely point;
he turned Tom loose, took a skiff which he knew was there, and started
out with my little boy upon the swollen tide--for the river was high.
They were soon discovered by the watch on shore. Shots were fired at
them. But the skiff was out in the centre of the stream, which was very
wide just there, and the shots missed. They followed the skiff along
shore. They knew what he did not--that the river narrowed below the
bend, and that there were rapids there. He reached the bend, and saw
that he was lost; the current carried the boat down towards the narrows;
and they began to shoot again; one shot struck Julian. Then his father
took him in his arms and jumped overboard with him. That, they knew, was
death. They saw the dark bodies whirled round and round, and amused
themselves by shooting at them once or twice; they saw them sucked
under. Then, farther away, they saw them again swept along like logs,
inert, dead; on and on; two black dots; out of sight. Then they rode
back, that hunting party; and their wives came and told me, as
mercifully as they could, that my husband and my little boy were
drowned. I could not bury my dead; on the rapid current of the river
they were already miles away; in that country no one cared for the dead.
They cared but little for the living. I took my baby and went away; I
left that horrible land. I came eastward. I had no money, or very
little; my husband had taken what--what he needed for his flight, and
there was nothing left. I tried to teach little day schools for
children. I gave music lessons. I did my best. But I was not strong; my
little girl, too, was very delicate: there was something the matter with
her spine. When this life of ours--hers and mine--had lasted ten years
(for I am much older than you have supposed), I met Major Carroll. He
was so good as to love me; he was so good as to marry me; he took as his
own my poor little girl, and gave her all the comforts and luxuries she
needed--things I could not give. She died soon afterwards, in spite of
all. But in our new home she had had happy days, and when the end came
she did not suffer: she went back to God in sleep. On the 6th of last
July I was in the garden here, gathering some roses; it was below the
slope of the knoll, out of sight from the house. The gate opened, and a
young man came in. He came across to me. He introduced himself as a
stranger in Far Edgerley, who had admired our flowers. He spoke several
sentences while I stood looking at him. I was frightened; I knew not
why. At last, recovering myself, I turned to walk towards the house.
Then it was that he put his hand on my arm, and said: 'Don't you know
me, mother? I am Julian, the little boy you thought dead.' He was
thirty-one years old, and I had lost him before he was eight. What had
startled me was his likeness to his father. They had escaped, after all.
His father had feigned death; he had let himself be swept along, keeping
hold of the child, who was unconscious. It was a desperate expedient.
But he was desperate. He was an expert swimmer, and he succeeded, though
barely, with life just fluttering within them. They lay hid in a
canebrake for some days, and then, after much difficulty, they made
their way out of the country. They went to Mexico. Then they went to the
West India Islands. They lived in Martinique, and they took the name of
Dupont. My husband did not try to come back; a reward had been offered
for him before he fled; there was a price on his head. He knew that I
supposed him dead, and he was quite willing to be dead--to me. He was
tired of me. I was only a burden to him. I was always talking about
little things. My son thought that we were dead--his little sister and
I; his father had told him so. But after his father's death he found
among his papers some memoranda which made him think that perhaps we
were not, that perhaps he could even find us. He did not try
immediately; it was but a chance, and he was interested in other things.
But later he did try; that is, in his way; he was never sharp and
energetic--as you are. He found me; but his little sister had gone to
heaven. My son had had only the education of the islands, and he was,
besides, a musician. The temperament of musicians is peculiar. You will
allow me to say that I think you do not understand it. He wished to go
back to the islands; he had been in the United States for a year, and he
did not like the life or climate. I helped him as much as I could. It
was not much; but he started. Then he had that illness in New York, and
came back. It was most important that he should start again, and
soon--before the return of winter. I had nothing to give him, and so I
went to my daughter--I mean my step-daughter, Sara. She has, you know, a
small income of her own, left her by her uncle. You are asking yourself
why I did not go to the Major; why there should have been any secret
about it from the first. It was because I had not told him at the time
of our marriage, or at any time, that I had ever had a son. He thought
when he married me that Cecilia was my only child; he thought me
twenty-three, when I was in reality over thirty-five. It would have been
a great shock and pain to him to know that I had deceived him--a shock
which, in his state of health at that time, he could not have borne.
When Sara knew, she helped me; she helped me nobly. But the time for the
semi-annual payment of her income was not until the 12th of October, and
by the terms of her uncle's will she could not anticipate it; we were
therefore obliged to wait. Before the 12th of October my son was taken
ill, as I had feared. And the rest--you know. The time when I could tell
you this has now come. It has come because nothing can again disturb the
Major's peace. He is near us in touch, and close to our love, but
earth's sorrows and pains can trouble him no more. I can therefore tell
you, and I do it for two reasons. One is that it will explain to you the
course we took; it will explain to you what Sara said that afternoon,
for I think that it has grieved you--what Sara said. It was an expedient
that she thought of to divert your attention, to stop further action on
your part. We knew--from your having tried to see the Major, and see
him alone--that you had learned something; how much, we could not tell.
And when you came again the next day, and spoke as you did, first to me,
and then to her, and I was frightened and lost my courage, fearing lest
you should speak to others also; then Sara took the only expedient she
could think of to silence you, to stop you effectually, and thus secure
her father's peace. But it was only an expedient, Mr. Owen. It was never
true." She paused for the first time in the utterance of her brief
sentences, turned her head, and looked at him with her faded, tired
eyes.
Owen's own eyes were wet. "Even before that," he said, "and I do not
deny how important it is to me--more important than anything else in the
world--even before that, Madam Carroll, I beg you to say that you
forgive me, that you forgive what I did and said. I did not know--how
could I?--and I was greatly troubled."
"I think I can say that I have forgiven you," answered Madam Carroll. "I
did not at first; I did not for a long time. It is all over now; and of
course you did not know. But you never understood my son--you could not;
and therefore--if you will be so good--I should prefer that you should
not speak to me of him again; it is much the easiest way for us both."
She turned her eyes back to the wall. "About Sara," she continued,
without pause, "it was a pity. It has been a long time for you to
wait--with that--that mistaken belief on your mind. But, while the Major
was still with us in his consciousness and his memory, I could not tell
to you, a stranger, what I was not able to tell him."
"You were afraid to trust me!" said Owen, a pained expression coming
into his face.
"Yes," answered Madam Carroll, simply.
"You did not know then that I felt as far as possible from being a
stranger? That I wished--that I have tried--"
"That is later; I was coming to that. Yes--since I have known that you
cared so much for her (though I knew it long ago!)--since you have
spoken, rather, I have felt that I wished to tell you, that I would
gladly tell you, as soon as I could. The time has come, and it came
earlier than I expected, though I knew it could not be long delayed. I
have taken the earliest hour."
"Then she--then Miss Carroll told you that I--that I had spoken?" said
Owen.
"She told me because I asked her, pressed her. I knew that you had been
here--a week ago, wasn't it?--I had caught a glimpse of your face as you
left the house. And so I asked her. She is very reticent, very proud;
she would never have told me, in spite of my asking, if her wish to
show me that I had been mistaken in something I had said to her long
before had not been stronger even than her reserve."
"What was it that you were mistaken in?" said Owen, quickly.
"I was not mistaken. But she wished to prove to me that I was. I had
told her in October that she cared for you, and that she had made the
greatest sacrifice a woman could make in voluntarily lowering herself in
your eyes by allowing you to suppose--to suppose what you did."
"You were mistaken, after all, Madam Carroll," said Owen, sadly. "She
cares nothing for me."
"Men are dull," answered the mistress of the Farms, wearily. "They have
to have everything explained to them. Don't you see that it was
inevitable that she should refuse you? As things stood--as you let them
stand--she could not stoop to any other course. She knew that you
believed that she had cared for--for Louis Dupont" (Madam Carroll's face
had here a strange, set sternness, but her soft voice went on
unchanged), "and she knew your opinion of him. She knew, moreover, that
you believed it clandestine, that she had not dared to tell her father.
For you to come, then, at this late day, believing all this, and tell
her that you loved her--that seemed to her an insult. Your tone was, I
presume (if not your words), that you loved her in spite of all."
"Yes," Owen answered. "For that was my feeling. I did love her in spite
of all. I had fought against it. I had thought--I don't know what. But
it was over; whatever it had been it was ended forever, and my love had
conquered. I knew that very well!"
"And you told her so, I suppose--'I love you in spite of all'--when you
should have said 'I love you; and it never existed.'"
"But had she not told me with her own lips that it did exist, that she
was engaged to him?"
"You should not have believed her own lips; you should have risen above
that. You should have told her to her face that you did not believe, and
never would believe, anything that was, or even seemed to be, against
her. I see you know very little about women. You will have to learn. I
am taking all this pains for you because I want her to be happy. Her
nature is a very noble one, in spite of an overweight of pride. She
could not explain to you, even at that time, without betraying me, and
that she would never do. But I doubt whether she would have explained in
any case; it would have been doing too much for you."
"All she did was done for her father," said Owen; "and it was the same
with you, Madam Carroll. Seldom has man been so loved. My place with her
will be but a second one."
"That should content you."
"Ah, you do _not_ like me, though you try to help me," cried the young
man. "But give me time, Madam Carroll; give me time."
"To make me like you? Take as much as you please. But do not take it
with Sara."
"I shall take five minutes," Owen answered. Then he lifted her hand to
his lips. "Forgive me for thinking of my own happiness," he said, with
the gentlest respect.
"I like you to think of it; it gives me pleasure. And now I must come to
my second reason for telling you. You remember I said that there were
two. This is something which even Sara does not know--I would not give
her any of that burden; she could not help me, and she had enough to
bear. She could not help me; but now you can. It is something I want you
to do for me. It could not be done before, it could not be done until
the Major became as he is at present. No one now living knows; still, as
you are to be one of us, I should like to have you do it for me."
And then she told him.