"Ah," exclaimed Mr. Floyd, starting to his feet, "that is your mother, I
hope."
I had become too much absorbed in our talk to hear the click of the
gate, but now I sprang up and rushed to the door, and, seeing my mother
quietly walking up the path, I ran out bareheaded into the rain.
"Oh, mother," I cried, "you cannot guess who has come to spend Sunday
with us!"
It seemed to me all at once that some thought of him must have been in
her mind, for her color came and went. "I hope it is Cousin James," she
replied calmly.
As I took her umbrella from her hand I could see that she was trembling
and her lips quivering. I unclasped her cloak and untied her bonnet, and
took them from her: she ungloved her hands hastily and smoothed her hair
as she went along the hall. Mr. Floyd stood facing her as she entered
the sitting-room. "Dear Mary!" said he, and took her in his arms and
kissed her.
I felt as if I had been struck a heavy blow. I knew that he had been not
only my father's first cousin, but his nearest and dearest friend as
well; but, for all that, it was not easy for me to see my mother
surrendering herself to that caress. But presently, when I saw that she
was crying, I knew that she was thinking only of my father and her long
agony of loneliness, and I forgave them both. When she regained her
calmness she called me to her with a timid smile and a faint blush.
"This is my boy, James," she said, looking up at Mr. Floyd smiling, but
with the tears still on her cheeks. "He is your godson, you remember,
and namesake."
"My godson, my namesake, my ward, and my dear friend besides," replied
Mr. Floyd, throwing his arm heavily over my shoulder. "I know him
already very well, and I like him more than I can tell you."
That same old thrill of feeling goes over me now like a wave as I write.
As I stood looking up at him I seemed to grow rich, as if I had suddenly
come into my kingdom. I continued to stand leaning against him as he sat
down close beside my mother and talked intimately and freely with her. I
may have felt a little alien and apart at first, for the days they
talked of were the days of long ago, before I could remember. Mr.
Floyd's private personal history had been but one short chapter in his
long, full and busy life. He was well past thirty before he had married
Alice Raymond, the only child of a wealthy merchant: she was but
seventeen when he first saw her and fell in love with her. Few people
knew whether the twelve short months of his married life were but as a
dream to him now, eleven years later, or whether his scant allusions to
that time came from a shy tenderness for a memory which was his dearest
and most sacred possession. Alice Raymond was but little past eighteen
when she died, and even the child she left behind her had never really
belonged to Mr. Floyd, but had grown up at her grandfather's at The
Headlands while her father had assumed the duties of a mission abroad.
Life had denied him little of what men seek as objects in a brilliant
and exciting career; but in listening to him now I felt a certainty that
he had been a lonely man, and, if not an unhappy one, that his mind was
tinged at least with a certain melancholy which lay at the root of all
his impulses.
My mother seemed to have grown younger in meeting him. She was always
the most beautiful of women to me, with her large, serious brown eyes,
her wavy brown hair, her complexion pure and delicate as a young girl's;
and indeed she was but twenty years older than myself, thus at this date
only thirty-four. But while she talked to Mr. Floyd I observed a change
in her: her eyes had lost their pensiveness and calm, and fell before
his shyly: the flushes came and went on her cheeks. He told her again
and again that in meeting her he found the first realization that he had
come back to his home: old Mr. Raymond had seemed to be afraid of him,
and little Helen had cried with terror when he first clasped her in his
arms and kissed her with unguarded fondness.
"But that was not strange," observed my mother. "Intimate affection is,
after all, a habit. Now that you have a chance of having your little
girl always with you, she will very soon grow fond of you."
"Oh, but I have no claim to her. She must stay with Mr. Raymond as long
as he lives, I suppose. He loved Alice, but he worships Helen. I robbed
him of his child once almost against his will, and now that he is so old
a man I could not have the heart to do it again."
"But she is your own daughter!" cried my mother, half indignantly.
"But I made my mistake ten years ago. Just then I only cared for what
lay beneath a fresh grave at The Headlands: there seemed to be no
to-morrow for me--no time when I should get used to such sorrow and find
comfort in any one or anything that took Alice's place. I gave up Helen
then with absolute indifference: now such coldness seems enigmatical to
me."
"You ought to have her with you now."
"It could not be. I asked her this morning if she would come with me:
she burst into a passion of weeping, and declared she could not leave
her grandfather--that he would die without her; and I verily believe
that he would. Well! well! I have got along for ten years without
happiness. I have a career, while Mr. Raymond, millionaire though he is,
has nothing but Helen. If only my health does not altogether fail!"
"You are not ill, James?"
"The doctors tell me that I have three incurable diseases," returned Mr.
Floyd, laughing. "Then I took cold the moment I landed in this horrible
climate. I perfectly realize the truth of the Psalmist, who declares
that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Physicians dote upon me: I
am an admirable field of research. Some people have the ill taste to die
without any preliminaries, but I shall not give occasion for any painful
surprise. Still, I only tell you this that you may make the most of me.
Let me hear about yourself, Mary. If you only knew how often I have
thought of you shut away here from the world in this wretched country
place, nothing near you not utterly foreign to your tastes and your
circles of thought!"
My mother's hand stole into mine, and she met my jealous glance and
smiled into my face. "Cousin James does not know what good times we
have, does he, Floyd?" said she.
"I forgot for one moment your consolations," said Mr. Floyd. "I saw your
boy's mates when I came in: one of them has a powerful face: he looks
like a youthful Cato."
"That is Jack Holt," I cried. "He _is_ like Cato: he is strong, severe,
just. Whatever he says ought to be done we know must be done, even if
the heavens fall."
"And the handsome fellow, who is he? Harry Dart? He looks equal to the
heroism of all Plutarch's heroes: he has a beautiful, consecrated face.
I hope he will live up to what it tells us now."
Glad and proud although I was to see Mr. Floyd, his coming disturbed me
a little. Hitherto I had accepted my life unquestioningly. We had been
poor ever since my father's death, and my mother's life had become
circumscribed and narrowed down to Belfield. It had seemed to me that no
other people in the world were just so happy as my mother and myself.
What need had we of a larger house, when the one stately mansion that I
was familiar with appeared to me a desert, even with all its fairy-land
splendors? Jack Holt's father was too rich a man not to allow his wife
all the good things which she coveted, and her parlors, halls and
bedrooms were irrefragable proof of the enormities which may be
committed with an utter want of taste and tens of thousands of dollars.
Both Harry and Jack hated the house, and spent every available moment
out of school in our comfortable, well-worn nooks inside and out of
doors. My mother used to play to us at twilight, and sing sweet ballads
which gave us a state of mind full of the blessed misery which youth
loves. Then what gay little waltzes used to rattle off from my mother's
fingers! She taught us all to dance, and in the winter dusk we would
waltz in turn with Georgy Lenox, the two of us who could not have her as
a partner circling with our arms about each other's less slender waists.
Then the feasts my mother used to cook for us with her own clever hands
have made the greatest banquets seem poor since: she had the gift of
performing every feminine task better than any other woman in the world.
In short, I had lived the life which undoubtedly comes to many a lad who
has no father: my mother appeared to have no thought but of me and my
happiness, and not one of my dreams of far-reaching happiness but
included her. I realized enough of the exquisite worth of her devotion
to me never to cross her wishes: an invisible yet insurmountable barrier
separated me from any of the grosser faults of boyhood, for she never
let me go from her without her kiss, the clasp of her hand, and her
saying, "You will be a good boy, Floyd?"
Yes, I had been perfectly happy; and, as I say, it disturbed me to have
a doubt suggested that this full, complete existence of mine had not
filled my mother's heart as well. Belfield--merely writing the word
"Belfield" has a breezy influence over my mind still. Wherever a man has
spent his boyhood there linger associations of the cool wind of the
hill-top, the sound of the sea audible yet invisible, the hush before a
storm, the tumbling of the ice in the river in the spring freshets, the
berries that grew on the edge of the wood, the ecstatic thrill of
physical strength and delight on the playground where he ran "drinking
in the wind of his own speed." But youth is the season not alone of
action, but of reverie. Most of our original thinking is done before we
are sixteen: after that we acquire so much of other men's experience
that our thoughts wear the current stamp. We come into our rich
inheritance of the world's accumulated knowledge, and evolve from it the
answers to the necessities of our own individual development. As boys we
were not cribbed by any exact logic and hard common sense, which must
stretch us a little later on a Procrustean bed, and we were free to grow
as we would and to stand on the highest level of noble thought and
heroic deed. The writers whom we read with avidity were those who
ennobled us: in those days youth was the era of a high romanticism, and
our authors did not enter the actual world which lay about us, giving us
pictures of real life, and with devilish ingenuity teaching us to regard
men's actions from the reverse side, and thus detect ignoble traits as
the mainspring of human achievement.
More than forty of us went to school together in the stiff white
academy which stood on the hill surrounded by a quadrangle of straight
poplars. We learned many things there--some from the grim old preceptor,
some outside the walls. I had a volume of Plutarch, from which I used to
read stories to the boys as we lay on the grassy slopes in the shade,
and I often felt a tremor in my voice as I read. It seems to me
sometimes that the youth of this day lose some of the grandeur which
made our ideals. Our sons read "Oliver Optic" and the magazines, while
we used to thrill over the grand words of the men who have ruled the
world. Then my mother's teaching was simple, direct and wise, and had
become incorporated in every action of my will and impulse of my heart.
I was to love and obey my God, never to tell a lie, never to do a mean
action, never to be disloyal to a friend nor unfair to a foe. Still, if
Harry and I were tolerably good, one of the reasons which acted most
powerfully to restrain us from committing faults was our wish to stand
well with Jack: he never scolded, never gave advice, but if he were
displeased with our conduct we could not eat or sleep. Once Harry
committed a trifling error--to call it a wickedness seems a grotesque
exaggeration now--and Jack did not like it.
"Of course, Harry," he said coldly, "you can do as you please, but I am
disappointed in you."
Harry rushed out of doors, and could not be found all night: he slept on
the turf beneath his cousin's window, and the rain drenched him and he
took a violent cold.
"You were foolish," observed Jack, smiling coldly.
"But do you forgive me now?"
"I forgive nothing: a bad action is a bad action. But I could not sleep
when I did not know where you were: I got up and studied, for I was so
tormented."
But Jack was so equable, so gentle! There was never a trace of harshness
in his treatment of us. Indeed, it was only in his unfailing rectitude
that he surpassed us, for, our senior although he was, he could barely
keep up in our classes. Harry was the quickest of the three, but with a
mortal hatred of hard study: he had an easy capacity for mastering
knowledge without tedious assiduity; and, as he was resolved to be a
painter, he held all mental acquirements as subsidiary to his
master-passion for gaining dexterity and skill with his pencil. He could
have done anything at his books had he expended any high endeavor, but
he always let his chances slip by him, and allowed me to carry off the
prizes which he might far more easily have won. I was by nature and
habit rigidly conscientious, and discontented with myself unless I did
my best. I hated cheap successes, and I was shy of praise, as my
performances always fell short of my ideals. Mine was no studious
disposition, and I had plenty of physical inclination to shirk lessons
and lie beneath the forest boughs watching the birds all day; but there
were detached lines that I used to repeat to myself aloud over and over
again in lonely places, caring far less for their meaning than for the
immeasurable music of the words.