That night was a misery of dreams that the deed was done, broken by
wakings desperate with the knowledge that it was yet to do. In the
morning she seemed to have lost all power of words; she bore her
husband's reproaches that Ned was late for breakfast; she went about
her household duties; she watched the girls start for school (she did
not kiss them; demonstrations of affection had never been possible to
this dumb breast; but she stared after them with haggard eyes); and
through it all she hardly uttered a word; when she did speak, it seemed
as though she had to break, by agonizing effort, some actual lock upon
her lips. When the girls had gone she looked about for her eldest; but
Ned was not to be found. "I never knew him to go to the store before
breakfast," she thought, miserably. His father, pulling on his coat in
the hall, said that Ned was getting industrious to go to his work so
early! His wife was silent.
When he started, whistling cheerfully,
[Illustration: music fragment]
she watched him from the window, straining her eyes until he was out of
sight. Then she went up-stairs to her bedroom, and, opening his closet
door, leaned her head against one of his coats, trembling very much.
Afterwards she wandered about the house in aimless, restless waiting
for Ned.
In the course of the morning Tom sent over to inquire why the boy had
not come to the store. Milly told the messenger to tell Mr. Dilworth
that Mr. Edwin was not at home. "Say I thought he was at the store,"
she said. "I'll give him his father's message when he comes in to
dinner." But he did not come in to dinner; and minute by minute the
afternoon ticked itself away. She had said to herself that she must
start about four, before Nancy and Mary got home from school. "It must
be so that it would be dark when I was coming back," she reminded
herself. "If I leave here at four, and get my bundle from Mrs. Kensy
at five, it would be pretty dark by the time I would be going home.
Mrs. Kensy will tell them that it was dark."
At four Edwin had not appeared; Milly, having no imagination, had no
anxiety; she merely gave up, patiently, the hope of a wordless
good-bye. But she kept looking for him; and when she finally put on
her things, she paused and turned back to the window, to look once more
towards Old Chester; but there was no sign of Ned. It did not occur to
her to postpone her plan; her mind, run into the mould of sacrifice,
had hardened into rigidity. So at last, miserably, the tears running
down her face, she stepped out into the cold and went down through the
garden to the river. There she turned and looked back, with dumb
passion in her eyes; the firelight was winking from the parlor windows
and all the warm commonplace of life seemed to beckon her. She put her
muff up to wipe her eyes, but she made no prayer or farewell; her
silence had reached her soul by that time.
[Illustration: "THERE SHE TURNED AND LOOKED BACK"]
It was very cold; the ice was rough, and the wind had blown the dry
snow about in light drifts and ripples, so that walking was not
difficult. She trudged out, up towards the Bend, skirting the place
where the men had been cutting. They had gone home now, and the ice
about the black, open space of water was quite deserted. The wind came
keenly down the river, blowing an eddy of snow before it; the bleak sky
lay like lead over the woods along the shore. There was not a house in
sight. Amelia Dilworth looked furtively about her; then she bent down
and scraped at the snow on the edge of the ice, as one might do who, in
the water, was struggling for a hold upon it. After that, for a long
time, she stood there, looking dumbly at the current running, black and
silent, between the edges of the ice. At last, her hand over her mouth
to check some inarticulate lament, she stooped again, and put her
little black muff on the broken snow close to the water.
When she reached Mrs. Kensy's she was quite calm. She said briefly
that she had come to order some chickens; "--and I'll take that bundle
I asked you to keep for me."
The woman brought it, and Milly tucked her fingers through the stout
strings she had tied so carefully a few days before. When she would
open it in the woods, and put on the new dress and shawl and the heavy
veil that it held, and then, in the dark, take the half-past-five
train, no one would know that Thomas Dilworth's wife had fled away into
another State. They would find the muff, and they would think--there
would be only one thing to think.
"I want the chickens for Sunday," she said; "please send them over on
Saturday." Then it came into her mind with a little gush of happiness
that she would pay for them on the spot, instead of having the bill
sent to Tom, as was her custom; she had drawn a sum of money from the
bank a fortnight ago--a small sum, but her own; now it was all in her
purse; she would buy Tom's Sunday dinner out of her little fund.
Except to leave him, it was the last thing she would ever do for him.
She put her hand into her pocket--and chilled all over. Then stood
blankly looking at the woman; then plunged her hand down again into her
pocket; then exclaimed under her breath; then tore her bag open and
fumbled distractedly among brushes and night-gown and slippers; then
pulled her pocket wrong side out with trembling fingers.
"_My purse!_" she said, breathlessly. Then she searched everything
again.
"It ain't any difference," Mrs. Kensy protested.
"I must have left it at home. I can't go back for it. It is too late."
"What for?" said Mrs. Kensy.
"The--the train."
"Oh, you was going on, was you?" Mrs. Kensy said. "Well, I can let you
have the price of a ticket a little ways."
But Mrs. Dilworth, with shaking hands, pulled everything out of her
bag, shook her skirts, fumbled in the bosom of her dress, ran out and
searched the garden-path, strained her eyes across the snow on the
river--all in vain. "Oh, my!" she said, faintly.
"But I can lend you the price of a ticket, ma'am," Mrs. Kensy said
again.
"No matter," Mrs. Dilworth said, dully. "I'll go home."
Even as she spoke she heard the train tooting faintly far up the
valley. She sat down, feeling suddenly sick.
V
There was nothing to do but to go home. She remembered now how in her
agitated watching for her son she had put her purse down on the corner
of her bureau--and left it there. Yes; there was nothing to do but go
back. "I can start to-morrow," she said to herself. But in the sick
reaction of the moment she knew that she could never start again; her
purpose had been shattered by the blow. She took her bundle--the
bundle that meant flight and disguise and self-sacrifice, and that
stood for the shrewdness which is so characteristic of the kind of
stupidity which forgets the purse--and went stumbling down in the
darkness to the river. She said to herself that she must get her muff;
and she thought heavily that it would be pretty hard to carry so many
things across the ice. She was numb with the shock of interrupted
ecstasy. She could not feel even mortification--only fatigue. She was
so tired that, seeing in the darkness a hurrying figure approaching
her, she did not recognize her husband until he was almost upon her.
"_Milly_? My God! Milly!"
He had her muff in his hand, and as he reached her he caught at her
shoulder and shook her roughly. "Milly--I thought--I thought--" He
stammered with agitation. "I found this muff, and I thought it was
yours; and Neddy's gone, too, and I thought--both of you--"
"Neddy _gone_?" she repeated, dully.
She stood still on the ice, trying to get her wits together.
"He's disappeared. He isn't in town. He went out early this morning.
To skate, I suppose. Nora saw him from her window; at about six, she
says. And this open water"--she felt him quiver at her side--"and then
this muff--"
"No!" she said. "I--I made a mistake." She did not take in the words
about Ned.
"But where is he? Nobody's seen him. I suppose I'm a fool, but I'm
uneasy. I came to meet you because I thought you might know. But when
I saw this muff--it is yours, Milly, isn't it?--I got into a panic
about you, too."
"Why," she said--"it's mine; yes. I--I left it--I suppose. Neddy
wasn't with me. Did you think he was with me? I don't understand,"
she ended, bewildered.
"He hasn't been at home all day," her husband said, "nor in town,
either." And then he repeated the story, while she looked at him, slow
understanding dawning in her eyes.
"Neddy--gone! Where?"
"But that's what I don't know," the father said.
And his wife, dazed still, but awake to the trouble in his voice, began
to comfort him, alarm rising slowly in her own heart like an icy wave.
"Maybe he went to see somebody in Upper Chester?"
"But he doesn't know anybody at Upper Chester. Of course it's
possible. Only--you gave me such a fright, Milly!" Mrs. Dilworth put
her hand over her mouth and trembled. "However, I guess he's all
right, as you say. I guess we'll find him at home when we get back.
It's lucky I came to meet you, because I can lug your things for you.
How did you drop your muff, dear? Here, take it; your hands must be
cold. Oh, Milly, you gave me an awful fright--it was right on the very
edge of the ice; those confounded cutters hadn't put up any ropes. You
do really think there's no reason to be uneasy about Ned?"
"No," she said. Her knees shook; she had to pause to swallow before
she spoke. Oh, what if he should find her out? As she trudged along
at his side in the cold darkness she said to herself, with a sickening
sense of apprehension, that if he found her out she should die. Then
as her mind cleared she tried in her brief way to encourage him about
their boy; yet, as they drew nearer home and she saw again the firelit
windows, she began to awaken to the situation: Neddy had gone out to
skate; at six, did Nora say? Of course he might have stopped to see
somebody in Upper Chester; only Neddy never went to see anybody
anywhere--except (Amelia Dilworth had forgotten her!)--except that
Hayes girl--and she wasn't at home. Yes, it was strange; and worrying,
perhaps. But she only repeated, as they went hurrying up to the back
door, that she was sure Neddy was all right. But she held her breath
to listen for his voice haranguing his sisters in the sitting-room.
Instead, the two girls came running out to meet them.
"Oh, father, did you find Ned? Oh, here's mother; she'll know where he
is."
"Mother, I'm sort of scared about him," Mary whispered.
"He's gone to see some friend," the mother said, and her brevity, so
agonizing to her, seemed to reassure the others.
"He hasn't any friend except Miss Helen Hayes," Nancy said, "and she
went away last week."
"Maybe he's gone to hunt her up," Mary said, giggling, and her father
told her to be quiet.
"It's thoughtless in him to be so late. But your mother isn't worried,
so I guess we needn't be. Your mother says there is not the slightest
cause for anxiety, and she knows."
"Come to supper," Amelia said, her heart sinking; and the commonplace
suggestion cheered them all, although Tom Dilworth did not like to lose
the assurance of his wife's presence, even to have her go up-stairs to
take off her bonnet, and went with her, saying again, decidedly, that
there was, as she said, no possible reason for uneasiness, and that he
himself hadn't a particle of anxiety. "But I'll give that boy a piece
of my mind for worrying you so. Why, Milly, what a fat pocket-book!
Where did you get so much money, my dear? I didn't know the hardware
trade was so prosperous. Look here, Milly--it is pretty late,
honestly?"
She took her purse out of his hands, her own trembling. For a moment
she could not speak, and leaned forward to look into the swinging glass
and make pretence of untying a knot in her bonnet-strings. "Oh, he'll
come home soon," she said.
In spite of assurances, the tea-table was not very cheerful--the girls
stopped short in the middle of a sentence to listen for a step on the
porch. Tom got up twice to look out of the window. Mrs. Dilworth
thought she heard the gate slam, and held her breath; but no Ned
appeared. The evening was endlessly long. Tom pretended to read his
newspaper, and kept his eye on one spot for five minutes at a time. At
ten he packed the girls off to bed; at eleven he was walking up and
down the room; at twelve he told his wife to go to bed; but somehow or
other he went himself, while she sat up, "to let the boy in."
You can make excuses for this sort of lateness up to a certain point;
but it is curious that at about 2.30 in the morning the excuses all
give out. Tom Dilworth got up and dressed. "Something has happened,
Milly," he said, brokenly. His wife put her arms around him, trying to
comfort him.
"If Miss Hayes was only at home," she said, "maybe she would have some
idea of his plans. He might have told her. And she could tell us what
to do."
"Who?" said Tom--"that Hayes girl? Maybe so. I hadn't thought of her.
No, I don't believe she'd be any help. She hasn't got much sense in
that kind of way."
Such ages and ages was Milly away from her great experience of jealousy
that she felt no relief at this bald betrayal. Together they went out
onto the porch, listening, and straining their eyes. The moon was just
going down; it was very cold; far off a dog barked. But there was no
human sound. The two haggard people went shivering back into the hall,
where a candle burned dimly in the glass bell hanging at the foot of
the stairs.
"Something has certainly happened," Tom said again. "Oh, Milly, you
are always so calm and I go all to pieces." He leaned his elbow
against the wall and hid his face in his arm. His wife heard him groan.
"And--I've been hard on him sometimes," he said.
She took his hand and kissed it silently.
Poor Tom went to pieces more than once in the days that
followed--dreadful days of panic and despair. Old Chester, aroused at
daybreak by the terrified father, decided at once that the boy was
drowned; but everybody stood ready to help the stricken parents with
hopeful words to the contrary, words which rang as hollow to Thomas and
his wife as to the well-meaning liars.
It was on Wednesday that he had disappeared. On Friday they dragged
the river through the open holes; on Saturday, blew up the ice and
dragged all the way down to the second bend. That night Nancy and Mary
crept away to cry in their own room; Tom sat with his head buried in
his arms; his wife knelt beside him, touching him sometimes with a
quiet hand, but never speaking. Dr. Lavendar came in and put his hand
on Tom's shoulder for a minute, and then went away. The firelight
slipped flickering about the room; sometimes the coal in the grate
snapped and chuckled, and a spurt of flame shone on the two suddenly
aged faces. And then into the silent room came, with hurried,
shamefaced triumph--Edwin.
"I--I'm afraid you've been anxious--"
"He ought to have written," said another voice, breathless and
uncertain, and breaking into nervous laughter. "It is naughty in him
to have forgotten. I--I told him so."
Thomas Dilworth lifted his head and stared, silently; but his wife
broke out into wild laughter and streaming tears; she ran and threw
herself on Edwin's breast, her throat strangling with sobs.
"Oh--she's found Neddy! She has brought him back to us!--she has found
him! Oh, Miss Hayes, God bless you--God bless you! Oh, where did you
find him?"
Miss Hayes opened her lips--then bit the lower one, and stood, scarlet.
"I meant to write," Edwin began to explain--"of course I meant to
write, but--"
"Oh, dear Mrs. Dilworth," Helen's fluttering voice took up the excuse,
"you must forgive him"--she came as though to put her arms about Ned's
mother. "After all, a bridegroom, you know--"
Milly lifted her head from Edwin's shoulder and gaped at her.
"Bridegroom?"
Thomas Dilworth got on his feet and swore. Miss Helen Hayes--or, no;
Mrs. Edwin Dilworth--came and hung upon his arm.
[Illustration: "THOMAS DILWORTH GOT ON HIS FEET AND SWORE"]
"You won't mind very much? You'll forgive him? We couldn't tell,
because--because papa would have interfered; but I knew your dear, kind
heart. Mrs. Dilworth, I have so revered Mr. Dilworth!--that was one
reason I said _yes_. You'll let me be your little girl, Mr. Dilworth?"
"Little--_grandmother_!" said Tom Dilworth; and burst into a roar of
laughter; then stopped, and said through his set teeth to his son, "You
scoundrel!"
"Thomas--don't!" the mother entreated. "He has come back."
"He'd better have stayed away!" Thomas said, furiously, in all the
anger of suddenly relieved pain.
"Oh, dear Mrs. Dilworth," Helen murmured, "forgive us! He ought to
have written--I ought to have reminded him. But--_you_ understand? I
know you do. Just these first beautiful days, one forgets everything."
"Well, I tell you I meant to write," Ned persisted, doggedly. "But
mother put me all out by going over to the Bend in the afternoon. I
was going to take that train, and of course I couldn't; Kensy's house
is right there by the station. And I had to take the morning train
instead; and it put me all out. I had to get up so early I forgot to
take any clothes," he added, resentfully. "It wasn't my fault."
"Not your fault?" his father said, and then turned to his wife, almost
with a sob. "Milly, can he be our boy, this sneak?"
"Yes; yes, he is, Tom; indeed he is, dear. And he just forgot; he
didn't mean anything wrong." Milly was almost voluble, and she was
crying hard. And then she looked at the woman who had brought him
back--the faded, anxious, simpering woman, who for once had no words
ready. Milly looked at her, and suddenly opened her arms and took her
son's elderly wife to her heart. "Oh, you poor woman," she said, "how
unhappy you must have been at home!"
Helen looked at her blankly, then dropped her head down on the kind
shoulder, and Milly felt her quiver.
"She's fifty!" Tom said, trembling with anger. "How the devil a son of
mine can be such a jack--"
"Tom, dear! there now, _don't_," the mother said; "he's at home. Just
think; he's at home! and we thought--we thought--" Her voice broke.
"We'll all love you, Miss Hayes--I mean Helen," she whispered to the
sobbing woman.
Then, with a sort of gasp, she put her daughter-in-law's arms aside
gently, and went over and kissed her husband.
As for Thomas Dilworth, after the first shock of anger and
mortification had passed, and the young couple had finally settled
themselves upon the disgusted bounty of the respective fathers, he used
to whistle incessantly a certain song much in vogue at the time:
"I hanker
To spank her,
Now I'm her papa!"
"AN EXCEEDING HIGH MOUNTAIN"
I
Robert Gray's first wife, Alys (Old Chester had hard work to swallow
her name; "but it's better than any of your silly 'ie's,'" said Old
Chester)--this first Mrs. Gray was a good deal of a trial to everybody.
She was not only "new," but foreign; not only foreign, but indifferent
to Old Chester. Indeed, it took all Old Chester's politeness and
Christian forbearance to invite Mrs. Robert Gray to tea--with the
certainty that the invitation would be declined. She was an English
girl whom Robert met somewhere in Switzerland--a heavy-eyed, silent
creature, certainly a very beautiful woman, but most inefficient and
sickly; and there were so many nice, sensible girls in Old Chester!
(However, there is no use saying things like that: as if a man ever
married a girl because she was sensible!)
Yet young Gray certainly needed a sensible wife; his wealth was limited
to character and good manners, plus a slender income as tutor in the
Female Academy in Upper Chester. Excellent things, all; but a wife
with sense (and money) would have been an agreeable addition to his
circumstances. Whereas, this very beautiful English girl was a
penniless governess, left stranded in Germany by an employer, who had,
apparently, got tired of her. Robert Gray had met the poor, frightened
creature, who was taking her wandering way back to England, and married
her, frantic with rage at the way she had been treated. When he
brought her home, he was so madly in love that he probably did not half
appreciate Old Chester's patience with her queer ways. But the fact
was, that for the few months she lived, she was so miserable that Old
Chester could not help being patient, and forgiving her her half-sullen
indifference, and her silence, and her distaste for life--even in Old
Chester!
For in spite of Robert's adoration, in spite of all the ready
friendliness about her, in spite of the birth of a baby girl, she
seemed, as it were, to turn her face to the wall. She died when the
child was about a week old. Died, the doctor said, only because, so
far as he could see, she did not care to live.
"You ought to try to get better for the baby's sake," said Miss Rebecca
Jones, who had come in to help nurse her. And the poor girl frowned
and shook her head, the heavy, white lids falling over her dark eyes.
"I don't like it."
And Rebecca (who had too much good sense to be shocked by the vagaries
of a sick woman) said, decidedly: "Oh, you'll learn to like her. Come,
now, just try!"
But she did not seem to try; even though Robert, kneeling with his arm
under her pillow, holding her languid hand to his lips, said, sobbing,
"Oh, Alys, Alys--for God's sake--don't leave me--"
Then she opened her beautiful eyes and looked at him solemnly.
"Robert," she said, "I am sorry. I am--sorry. I--am--"
"What for, precious?" he entreated; "sorry for what? to leave me? Oh,
Alys, then live, live, dear!"
"I--am--" she began; and then her voice trailed into eternity.
Miss Rebecca Jones hung about the house for a few days, to make the
poor gentleman comfortable; then he was left alone with the child
(purchased at so dreadful a cost) and one servant, and his daily work
of teaching the polite languages at the Female Academy. Miss Rebecca's
hard face softened whenever she thought of him; but all she could do
for him was to go often to see the poor seven-months baby--which seemed
for a time inclined to follow its mother.
Now it must be understood at once that Rebecca Jones was not a schemer,
or a mean or vulgar woman. She was merely a hard-headed,
honest-hearted product of years of public-school teaching, with a
passion for truth and no grace in telling it. She was sorry for Mr.
Gray, and sorry for the poor baby, who was being allowed, she said to
herself, to grow up every which way; and sorry for the comfortless
house left to the care of what she called "an uneducated servant-girl."
So, after school, and on Saturday mornings, she used to go over to Mr.
Gray's house and bustle about to the bettering of several things.
Indeed, old Mr. Jones told her more than once that he didn't know what
that there widower would do without her. And Rebecca said, truthfully
enough, that she didn't know, either. And when she said it her heart
warmed with something more than pity.
As for Robert Gray, dazed and absent, trying to do his duty at the
Academy during the day, and coming home at night to look blankly at his
child, he, too, did not know what he would have done that first year
without Miss Rebecca's efficient kindness. He was so centred in his
grief, and also of so gentle a nature, that he took the kindness as
simply as a child might have done. Like many another sweet-minded man,
he had not the dimmest idea of the possible effect of his rather
courtly manner and his very delicate courtesy upon a woman of slightly
different class, whose life had been starved of everything romantic or
beautiful. He became to sharp-tongued Miss Rebecca Jones a vision of
romance; and, somehow, quite suddenly, about eighteen months after his
wife's death, he discovered that he was going to marry her. In his
startled astonishment, he realized that he had himself led up to her
avowal of willingness by some talk about her kindness. Perhaps she had
misunderstood his words; if she had, Robert Gray was not the man to
offer an explanation.... However, after the first shock of being
accepted, he was gently explicit:
"I realize that the child ought to have the care of a good woman, and
therefore I--"
"I'll do my duty by her," Rebecca said.
"I want her brought up to love and reverence her mother. I want her
brought up to be like her. It is for the child's sake that I--I marry
again. I speak thus frankly, Miss Rebecca, because I so entirely
respect you that I could not be anything but frank."
Rebecca's square face flushed over the high cheek-bones to the gaunt
forehead and the sparse hair; then her eyes looked passionately into
his. "I understand. Yes; I understand. And I will be good to your
child, Mr. Gray."
And so he married her; and, when you come to think of it, it was a very
sensible thing to do. Even Old Chester said he was very sensible. A
man of thirty, with a baby--of course he ought to marry again! "But
why on earth," said Old Chester, "when there are so many girls of his
own class!--not but what Rebecca Jones is a very worthy person."
Meanwhile, Rebecca, with hard conscientiousness, set herself to bring
the child up. She trained her, and disciplined her, and made a painful
point of talking to her about the first Mrs. Gray, according to her
promise to teach her to "love and reverence her mother." The
discipline sometimes made Robert Gray wince; but it was wise, and never
unkind; so he never interfered;--but he left the room when it was going
on. Once he said, nervously:
"I scarcely think, Mrs. Gray, that it is necessary to be quite so
severe?"
"She must be made a good child," Rebecca answered.
"I am not afraid that she will not be a good child," Robert Gray said;
"she is her mother's daughter."
"Well, she is her father's daughter, too," Rebecca declared, briefly.
And her husband, shrinking, said:
"Light is stronger than darkness; Alice's mother was a creature of
light. I am not afraid of her inheritance of darkness."
As for Rebecca, she went away and shut herself up in the garret.
"'Creature of light!'" she said, sitting on the floor under the
rafters, and leaning her head on an old horsehair-covered trunk wherein
were packed away Mr. Gray's winter flannels--"well, I am a good wife to
him, if I ain't a 'creature of light.'"
Yes, she was a good wife.... How carefully she put his flannels away
in May; how prudently she planned his food; how she managed to make the
two ends of his little income meet--yes, and lap over, so that every
summer he could go away from her for a two months' vacation in the
woods! Not once did he find a button lacking; not once had he put on a
clean pair of stockings and then pulled them off because of a hole in
the heel. Can our lords say as much, my mistresses? I trow not! Yes,
a good wife: that lovely being who left the world with a faint,
unfinished regret upon her pitiful lips could never have made him so
comfortable.
Indeed, the whole household revolved upon Robert's comfort. Every
domestic arrangement had reference to his well-being. That he did not
become intolerably selfish was not Rebecca's fault, for, like many good
wives, she was absolutely without conscience in the matter of
self-sacrifice; but Robert escaped spiritual corruption, thanks to his
own very gentle nature and his absolute unconsciousness of the
situation. Perhaps, too, Rebecca's tongue mitigated the spoiling
process. She never spared him what she considered to be the truth
about himself or Alice. But her truthfulness stopped here; she spared
the dead, perforce. For what could she say ill of that beautiful
creature whose only wrong-doing lay in dying? But she knew, with
shame, that she would have liked to speak ill of her--in which
reprehensible impulse to remove a fellow-being from a pedestal, Rebecca
showed herself singularly like the rest of us.
In this bleak air of unselfishness and truth-telling, Robert Gray
became more and more aloof. Gradually he retreated quite into his
past, doing his daily work at the Academy--where successive classes of
young ladies adored him for his gentle manners and his mild, brown
eyes--and living very harmlessly with his memories, which he kept fresh
and fragrant by sharing them with Alys's daughter, who, it must be
admitted, being young and human, was not always intensely interested;
but Rebecca had trained her too well for Alice ever to show any
weariness. Robert kept his little collection of pictures and
photographs of his first wife shut behind the curtained doors of an old
secretary. If his second wife found him standing, his hands clasped
behind him, his eyes wandering from one lovely presentment to another,
he never displayed an embarrassed consciousness, but he shut the doors.
He accepted Rebecca's devotion respectfully; he was never impolite,
still less unkind; in fact, in all their married life he had never, she
used to tell herself, spoken unkindly save once; and then his words
were nothing more dreadful than, "We will not discuss it, if you
please, Mrs. Gray." At first he had, very gently, made some
grammatical suggestions; and she had profited by them, though, being a
true Pennsylvanian, she never mastered "shall" and "will," nor did she
lose the Pennsylvania love for the word 'just'; to the end of her days,
Rebecca was 'just tired out'; or 'just real glad'; or 'just as busy as
could be.' Grammar, however, was as far as Robert Gray went in any
personal relation. He addressed her, in his courteous voice (always a
little timidly), as "Mrs. Gray"; and he kept as much as possible out of
her way. Meantime, Rebecca (remembering why he had married her) did
her duty by the child, and never failed to mention, in her hard voice,
that Alice must try to grow up like her mother.
"Make me a good girl," Alice used to say in her sleepy prayers every
night--"make me a good girl, like my dear mother." Once, of her own
accord, the child added, "And make me pretty like her, too." Rebecca,
listening to the little figure at her knee, said, sternly, when Alice
got up and began to climb into the big four-poster:
"Don't be vain. Don't ask God for foolish things. Beauty is foolish
and favor is deceitful. Just ask Him to make you as good as your
mother was."
And, indeed, it must be admitted that the child did not inherit her
mother's wonderful beauty. At first her father had expected it; he
used to take liberties with his Horace, and say:
"O filia pulchra matre pulchriore."
But as Alice grew older, Robert Gray had to admit that the dead woman
had taken her beauty away with her. The child had just a pleasant
face; eyes that were gray or blue, as it happened; a commonplace nose,
and uncompromisingly red hair. In those days red hair was thought to
be a mortifying affliction, and poor, plain Alice shed many tears over
the rough, handsome shock of hair that broke into curls about her
forehead and all around the nape of her pretty, white neck.