My acquaintance with Mrs. Longbow was due to my early friendship with
her son Charles. Mrs. Longbow and her two daughters swung into my
orbit quite unimportantly at first as shadowy persons to whom Charlie
wrote letters home while we were boys at school; later I came to know
the mother as an imposing figure, shiny with black jet, who eyed the
school from a platform on those great occasions when Charlie received
prizes and I did not. I never learned her weight, but I saw that her
displacement was enormous. By successive stages, as I increased in
stature and in years, my knowledge of her grew. I visited her son,
I danced with her daughters, I frequently conversed with her,--she
preferred to converse rather than to talk,--and I came to know as much
of her habit and attitude of mind, perhaps, as one could who was thirty
years her junior, not actively engaged in reforming the world, and of
the despised sex.
Mrs. Longbow--Amelia E. Longbow, to designate her at once by the name
that she made illustrious--was of the older school of philanthropists,
who combined militant activity with the literary graces and a
tremendous sense of personal dignity. She could despise men and yet
receive them in her drawing-room without embarrassment; she could
wage a bitter warfare on wickedness and, when deeply stirred, write
a tolerable sonnet. She was indefatigable in her labors, but she was
never, to my knowledge, flurried or hurried. A large presence, she
moved through life with the splendid serenity of a steam-roller. She
was capable of prodigious labor, but not of idleness. Whatever her
hands found to do she did with all her might--and in her own way. At
one time or another she was engaged in reforming most things that are
susceptible of improvement or of disturbance. If she did not leave the
world better than she found it, the fault was the world’s, not hers.
It was a considerable shock to me that she should leave the world
at all, so necessary had she seemingly become to its proper
administration, let alone its progress. I read the news of her death
in London just as I was sailing for home after a summer’s holiday,
and I felt a touch of pride that I had known the woman whose career
was written large that day in the journals of a sister nation. But,
as I reflected, neither America nor England had waited till her death
to pay their homage. She had lived long, and on many great occasions
during three decades she had been signally and publicly honored as the
most remarkable of her sex. The cable-despatches announced that she
left a comfortable fortune, and leading articles agreed that she was
wholly admirable. I felt sure that she would have regarded the praise
as unmerited if she had not shown her ability by leaving a respectable
inheritance to her children. I had reason also to believe that she
never lost her self-confident assurance of her own worth: she died, the
newspapers said, quite peacefully.
Once back in New York, I took an early occasion to call on my friend
Charles Longbow. I had always liked him ever since the day that I
fished him, a shivering mite, out of the skating-pond at school. I had
been his chum thereafter until the end of my college course. Though I
could not emulate his distinction in scholarship or public speaking, I
could at least be useful to him, by virtue of my year’s seniority, in
protecting him from the consequences of his mother’s celebrity. I even
did him some service by pushing him into the thick of undergraduate
life. I was really very fond of him, and I was sure he liked me.
If I had seen less of Charlie in later years, it was merely because
our paths did not often cross in a natural way. We boast about our
civilization a good deal, but we keep to our trails much as savages
do--or animals, for that matter. Besides, for some years I had a good
reason, not connected with Charlie’s mother or himself, for keeping
away from the Longbow house. So I had been with him less than I could
have wished, though I had never lost the habit of his friendship. I was
busy in my own way, and he was occupied in his. He had never been the
conspicuous success that his youth had promised, but he was more widely
known than many men with a greater professional reputation. To the
larger public he was always, of course, his mother’s son. At forty he
was what one might call a philanthropic lawyer. He did a certain amount
of ordinary business, and he wrote on many topics of contemporary
interest for the reviews, made many addresses to gatherings of earnest
people, served on many boards and commissions. He had retained the
modesty and generosity of his boyhood, which made some of us devoted
to him even though we were not in full sympathy with all of his
activities. Pride and vain-glory in him were purely vicarious: he was a
little conceited about his mother.
As far back as my college days I had begun to distrust the estimate in
which Mrs. Longbow was held by her family and, as well as one could
judge, by herself. All of them, be it said, were supported in their
opinion of her greatness and her abounding righteousness by the world
at large. It was one of my earliest disillusionments to discover the
yawning vacuity that lay behind her solid front of fame; it was a sad
day for me, though it fostered intellectual pride, when I found out
that she was not such a miracle of goodness as she seemed. Though
Charles, as a matter of course, knew her much more intimately than I,
I think that he never penetrated her disguise.
With his sisters the case was somewhat different, as I began to suspect
not long after my own private discovery. They were a little older than
Charles, and had better opportunities of watching their mother at close
range. Helen married, when she was about twenty-five, a man of her own
age, who eventually became one of the most prominent editors in New
York--Henry Wakefield Bradford. She made him a good wife, no doubt, and
had some share in his success both as debtor and as creditor. Whether
she loved him or not, she supported his interests loyally. Though she
had made an escape from her mother’s house, she did not desert her.
Indeed, in Helen’s marriage Mrs. Longbow might truly have been said to
have gained a son rather than to have lost a daughter. The Bradfords
were ardent worshipers at the shrine, and they worshiped very publicly.
In private, however, I detected a faint acidity of reference, a tinge
of irony, that made me suspect them of harboring envious feelings.
Perhaps they resented the luster of satellites, and would have liked to
emulate Mrs. Longbow’s glow of assured fame. Helen never seemed to me a
very good sort, though we were accounted friends. She had many of her
mother’s most striking qualities.
Margaret, who was only a year older than Charles, never married. She
was her mother’s secretary and a most devoted daughter. She received
with her, traveled with her, labored for her without apparent repining.
Whether she ever had time to think seriously of marrying, or of leaving
her mother on other terms, always seemed to me doubtful. At all events,
she said as much to me repeatedly when at the age of twenty-five I
proposed to her. Without question, she had a great deal to do in
helping Mrs. Longbow to transact efficiently the business of the
universe. She was prettier than Helen, who grew large and stately by
her thirtieth year and was of too bold and mustached an aquiline type
for beauty. Margaret was fair, and retained the girlish lines of her
slender figure until middle age. She was clever, too, like the rest of
the family, and had seen much of the world in her mother’s company. She
wrote stories that had considerable success, and she would have had
personal distinction as a member of any other family. My only reason
for suspecting that she sometimes wearied of her filial rôle was a
remark that she once made to me when I complimented her on a pretty
novel she had published.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, “one has to do something on one’s own account
in self-defense. Mother swallows everybody--she is so wonderful.” The
final phrase, I thought, did not altogether let Mrs. Longbow out.
They were all writers, you see, all well known on the platform and in
the press, all active in good works and reform; but the children’s
celebrity shone mainly with a borrowed light. Irreverently enough, I
used to think of the mother as being like a hen with chicks. The hen’s
maternal clucking calls less attention to her brood than to herself.
When I went to see Charles, I expected to find him overwhelmed with
genuine grief, and Margaret, if she appeared at all, endeavoring to
conceal the relief that was sure to be mixed with her natural sense of
loss. Of course, Helen--Mrs. Bradford, that is--I should not see, for
she had her own house. I should have to pay her a visit of condolence
separately. I dreaded this first meeting, though I was really very
sorry for Charles, whose devotion to his mother could not be doubted.
I knew that he would expect me to say things at once consoling and
laudatory, which would be difficult to frame. With so vocal a family,
the pressure of a hand and a murmured word would be insufficient
expressions of sympathy.
When I reached the old house rather too far east on Thirty-eighth
Street, I was in a state of mind so craven that I would gladly have
shirked my duty on any pretext whatsoever; but I could think of none.
Instead, I had to tell both Margaret and Charles how deeply I felt
their loss. I found them up-stairs in the library, a dismal room
with too much furniture of the seventies, a mean grate, and heavy
bookcases filled with an odd collection of standard sets, reports of
philanthropic societies and commissions, and presentation copies of
works in all fields of literature and learning. I cherished a peculiar
dislike for this room, and I found no help in its dreadful reminders of
Mrs. Longbow’s active life. I did not quit myself well, but I managed
to speak some phrases of commonplace sympathy.
Charles, lean, dark, and bearded, took up my words, while Margaret
drooped in her chair as though some spring had gone wrong inside her.
“It was good of you to come so soon,” he said. “I’m sorry that you
couldn’t have been here for the funeral. Our friends were magnificent.
We were overwhelmed by the tide of sympathy. I think I might say that
the whole country mourned with us. You would have appreciated it, as we
did. It made one proud of America to see how she was revered; it made
me personally ready to ask forgiveness for all my cheap outbursts of
temper when I’ve thought the country was going wrong.”
“The papers on the other side were full of praises for her,” I remarked
uncomfortably.
“I know,” returned Charles. “The world must be better than we have
thought. I’d like to believe that the moral awakening in which she was
a leader has stirred men and women everywhere to right the wrongs of
humanity. But it will take more lives like hers to complete the work.”
“She interested a great many people in reform who wouldn’t have taken
it up if it hadn’t been for her influence. And all of you are carrying
on work along the same lines.” I had to say something, and I could
think of nothing less inane.
“Yes,” Charlie answered, wrinkling his forehead; “we must go on as well
as we can. But it’s like losing a pilot. She had genius.”
Margaret Longbow suddenly straightened herself and began to wipe her
eyes delicately.
“Mother had strength for it,” she said in a broken voice; “she had
wonderful energy.”
“But think what you have done--all of you!” I protested. “As a family,
you are the most active people I know.”
“I can’t go on--now. I’m going away as soon as things are straightened
out. I’m going to Italy to rest.” Margaret’s figure relaxed as suddenly
as it had stiffened. She lay back against a pile of cushions with the
inertness of utter fatigue.
“Margaret!” Charles exclaimed sharply. “What would mother have said?”
Margaret’s thin lip curled. She made me wonder what explosion was going
to follow.
“It doesn’t matter about Robert,” she said, turning her head ever so
slightly in my direction. “He knows that I’ve tagged behind mother all
my life; he knows that I never could keep up. He even knows how hard
I used to try. I’m not good enough and I’m not clever enough. She was
a whirlwind. I feel her death more than any of you,--I understood her
better,--but you don’t know what it has been like.”
She was sobbing now, gently, indeed, but with every sign of an
hysterical outburst, save that her voice never rose above its ordinary
key. I felt sure that she was not being histrionic even for her own
benefit, sure that she was filled with despairing grief, sure that she
was holding hard to the crumbling edge of self-control; but I wondered
what martyrdom of stifled individualism she was keeping back. Evidently
Charles and I did not understand.
Pale, horrified, obviously angry at the sudden exposure of his sister’s
weakness, Charles Longbow rose from his chair and confronted her.
“Margaret,” he said, and I detected in him, as he spoke, a comical
resemblance to Mrs. Longbow, “I can’t see, to be sure, why you should
behave so childishly. You ought to know better than any one else the
importance of mother’s work, and you owe it to her not to drop out now
that she is dead. She liked Italy, too, but she had a sense of duty.”
“She had--oh, I know all about it!” Margaret had suddenly grown calm,
and spoke with something like scorn. “But you don’t know what it was
to live with her so many hours every day--to be so dependent on her. I
haven’t cultivated any sense of duty of my own.”
“You must need to rest,” I remarked, wishing more than ever that I
could go away, and feeling sure that Charles would give anything to get
me out of the house. “A winter in Italy would do both of you a lot of
good, I feel sure, after all the strain you’ve been through. Why don’t
you go with Margaret, Charlie?”
He looked at me, sad-eyed and a little wondering.
“I couldn’t possibly take the time, Bob; but I dare say Margaret does
need a change. I’m sorry it I spoke impatiently. Only I can’t stand
it, Sister, when you speak as though mother were somehow to blame.”
“It’s all right, Charlie,” said Margaret, smiling from her cushions. “I
shouldn’t have broken out so. My nerves are on edge, I suppose. Perhaps
I shall come back from Italy after a while quite ready to take hold.
And one can write even in Italy.”
“That reminds me.” Charles turned again to me. “I’ve been hoping to see
you soon about one thing. We agreed the other day that you ought to be
asked about it before we made any move. The public naturally expects an
authorized biography of mother. The demand for it has already begun.
Don’t you think Henry Bradford is the person to do it? Helen thinks he
would be willing to.”
“He would do it well, undoubtedly,” I answered, rather startled by the
abruptness of the question. I was really unprepared to give a judicial
opinion about the matter.
“Henry would like to do it,” said Margaret, “and he would give a very
just estimate of her public life. Helen could look after the English;
she always does. Only I won’t have Henry or anybody else rummaging
through all mother’s private papers.”
“Of course we should--I mean, you ought to look them over first,”
returned Charles, uneasily.
“Henry has no discretion whatever,” commented Margaret. “Besides,
mother never liked him particularly, as both of you know perfectly
well. She liked you, Robert, a great deal better. Helen would be
furious if I said it to her, but it’s true.”
“Yes, yes, Henry tried her sometimes,” Charles murmured; “but he knows
about everything in which she was interested.”
“Why shouldn’t _you_ do it?” I asked him.
“Oh, it ought to be some one further removed from her,” he
answered--“some one who could speak quite freely. I couldn’t do it.”
“There’s one other possible plan,” I remarked. “Haven’t you thought of
it? Why shouldn’t the three of you collaborate in a life? It seems to
me that might be the most suitable arrangement. All of you write; you
have all been associated with your mother in her work. Why shouldn’t
you?”
“That plan hasn’t occurred to us,” returned Charles, hesitatingly. “It
might be appropriate: ‘The Life of Mrs. Longbow, by Her Children.’ What
do you think, Margaret? Would Helen think well of it?”
“Helen might,” replied Margaret. “I don’t quite know. I’d rather be
left out of it myself.”
“Oh, I couldn’t work with Helen alone,” said Charles. “She would
overrule me at every turn.”
“There you are!” Margaret put in. “It would be a beautiful idea, no
doubt; but we should find it hard to agree.”
“Yet we ought to consider the plan before we ask any one else to do the
book,” said Charles, looking at me as though for confirmation. He had
been walking about while we talked, and now stood facing us from behind
the library table.
“You certainly ought,” I agreed, rising to go.
A few days later I paid a visit to the Bradfords. Helen was alone. She
received me graciously and spoke of her mother with much feeling and
pride. Very soon, however, she turned the conversation to her sister.
“I’m troubled about Margaret,” she said. “You’ve seen her. I’d like to
know exactly what you think. She seems to me to be on the edge of a
nervous collapse, but she won’t see a doctor.”
“She is very tired, evidently,” I responded, “but I thought she had
herself well in hand. Perhaps it may be a good thing for her to put
through her plan of going to Italy.”
“Perhaps so. The poor child needs a rest, certainly. But I’m not at
all sure that she ought to be allowed to go away by herself.” Helen
Bradford eyed me significantly. “What worries me is her fixed idea that
mother has somehow been unjust to her. It is almost insane, this idea,
and it distresses me more than I can say. You see, I shouldn’t speak of
it at all except that you have known her so long. You see how absurd
the idea is. Margaret has had greater advantages from mother’s society
than any one else, as you know. It was a great privilege.”
“Undoubtedly.” I could not bring myself to say more than that, for I
had a swift vision of what forty-two years of constant association with
Mrs. Longbow must have been like. “But the strain on her these last two
months must have been very great.”
“Hardly greater than for me,” remarked Helen Bradford, stiffly. “I
relieved her at every turn. I think I did my full duty to mother.
Besides, mother never gave trouble; she was almost painfully anxious to
avoid doing so.”
“I am sure of it,” I hastened to say; “but I suspect that Margaret has
not the strength of Mrs. Longbow. You are more like your mother in
many respects.” I was not quite sure whether Helen would take this as
a compliment, whether she might not detect a flavor of irony in the
speech; but I was relieved when it brought to her lips an amiable smile.
“That is very good of you,” she said. “Margaret--poor dear!--has always
been perfectly well, but she has never had much vitality. That is very
important for us who are busy with so many kinds of work. Charles
doesn’t get tired in the same way, but he gets worried and anxious.
Mother never did. Margaret and Charles are more like my father. You
never knew him, I think?”
All through her speech Helen Bradford had been pluming herself much as
I have seen fat geese do. The comparison is inelegant, but it conveys
the impression she gave me. At the end she sighed.
“No,” I answered, “he died before I knew Charlie.”
“I remember him vividly,” said Helen, “though I was a mere girl when
he died, and I have often heard mother say that he fretted himself to
death over non-essentials, quite selfishly. I am, I hope and believe,
whatever my faults may be, not like that.”
I could truthfully say that she was not, and I added some commonplace
about Margaret’s restoration.
“I shall have to look after her,” she went on. “Charles can’t be
depended on to do so. It is a great pity she has never married. A great
deal will come on me, now that mother is gone. For instance, there is
her biography. I must arrange for it without too much delay. I am aware
that people will be waiting for it eagerly.”
“We can hardly hope to have the complete record of so active a life
immediately,” I said, thinking to be polite.
“Perhaps not,” she answered, “but my husband says that the success of
a biography depends very largely on when it is issued. It mustn’t be
too long delayed. You may not know that mother kept a copious journal
all through the years, from her earliest girlhood. With the letters she
saved, it will be of the greatest service to her biographer, I feel
sure.”
“I am convinced of it,” I returned. Indeed, I could picture to myself
the amazing confessions that must be hidden in any really intimate
journal by Mrs. Longbow. I suspected that the revelation of it would
shock right-minded persons; but I did not doubt that the spectacle of
self-immolation finding its reward in worldly success and fame would
give to thousands the thrill of true romance.
“Charles tells me,” proceeded Mrs. Bradford, “that you suggested the
possibility of our collaborating--the three of us--in the biography. It
is a very beautiful idea. ‘Mrs. Longbow, by Her Children!’ The great
public servant as seen by those nearest and dearest to her, by those
whom she brought into the world and trained to follow in her steps!
Mother would have appreciated your thinking of it, Robert, I feel sure.
But you must see how impracticable it would be. Margaret is in such a
state, and Charles would never get anything done. He is very busy with
his work, of course, as all of us are; and he is apt to weigh things
very critically. I should have great trouble in getting the biography
written within a reasonable time. I have thought that perhaps we ought
to get Henry to do it.”
“He would no doubt do it very effectively,” I said, and rose to go.
“We must consider carefully a great many things, mustn’t we?” she
remarked brightly. “And the matter is so very important! It is a great
responsibility for one to be the child of such a mother. So kind of you
to come, Robert! I prize your sympathy not only for itself, but because
I know how greatly you admired mother. It has been a great consolation
to see you.”
I left the house, glad that the interview was over and determined to
see as little of the Longbows as possible, unless I could get Charles
by himself. It struck me that, in donning her mother’s prophetic
mantle, of which she obviously considered herself the rightful heiress,
Mrs. Bradford found compensation for her responsibilities. I could not
see why I should be troubled about the question of a proper tribute to
Mrs. Longbow, whose personality I disliked as cordially as I disliked
most of her agitations. I wondered whether other friends had suffered
in the same way.
I was, indeed, not altogether pleased the following week when I
received from Margaret Longbow an invitation to dine informally with
her brother and herself.
“Helen and her husband are to be here Friday night,” she wrote, “and
I feel the need of outside support. They seem to think me harmlessly
insane, but will perhaps treat me less like a mental invalid if you
are here. I’m sure you will be bored; but I hope you will come, if you
can, for old friendship’s sake.” I could think of no polite excuse for
not responding to this signal of distress, and accordingly found myself
once more gathered to the collective bosom of the Longbows. I could
only hope that they would have the decency not to appeal to me for any
further advice.
The family was assembled before I arrived at the house. Margaret and
Charles looked a little uneasy, I thought; but the Bradfords, as usual,
were superbly aware only of their superiorities. Henry Bradford,
well-fed and carefully dressed, exuded success at every pore, but only
the delicate aroma of success. As an experienced editor, he had learned
to be tactful, and he had made himself the plump embodiment of tact.
His features composed themselves on this occasion with a becoming trace
of regretful melancholy and an apparent willingness to be as cheerful
as seemed proper. The only discordant note in his whole well-rounded
presentation of a journalist in easy circumstances was the top of his
head. Seen through a sparse thicket of hair, it was shiny, like a coat
worn too long. His wife had the impressive exterior of a volcano in
repose.
During the simple dinner we talked pleasantly about a variety of things
that were within the province of the Longbows: municipal reform,
Tolstoy, labor-unions, a plain-spoken novel by Mrs. Virgin, Turkish
misgovernment, the temperance movement. We did not mention Mrs.
Longbow’s name, but we felt, I am sure, that her spirit hovered over
us. I, at least, had an abiding sense of her immanence. When we went
back to the drawing-room together, I expected that her virtues would
become the topic of general conversation, and I dreaded the hour to
follow.
My fears were relieved, however, by the prompt withdrawal of Mrs.
Bradford and Charles. He wished her to sign some document. Margaret
and I were left for Henry Bradford to amuse, which he did to his own
satisfaction. He was kind enough to be interested in my humble efforts
to live honestly by my pen: he expressed himself almost in those terms.
When his wife appeared in the doorway and announced briefly, “Henry
dear, I want you,” I saw him waddle away without feeling myself moved
to sympathy.
“Henry is insufferable, isn’t he?” said Margaret, quietly. “I don’t see
how Helen can stand him except that he stands her.”
“Oh, come,” I answered, “you’re too hard on them. Besides, you wouldn’t
like it if I agreed with you.”
“Really, I shouldn’t mind at all. I’ve stood by the family all my
life, and I’ll stand by Charlie now; but I’ve never been deceived into
believing that I cared for Helen or Henry. I wouldn’t hurt them even
by saying what I think of them to anybody except you, but I prefer not
to see them. That’s one reason why I’m going abroad. We sha’n’t be so
intimate after I get back.”
She rose languidly from her chair and fidgeted nervously with some
books on the table.
“How long do you plan to stay?” I asked, crossing the room to her side.
“You think it will take me a good while to get free of their clutches?
I’m going to stay till I feel safe, that’s all. I don’t want to do
anything for anybody again, and I sha’n’t come back as long as there’s
a chance of my being asked.”
She spoke vindictively, with more vehemence than I had ever seen in
her. She gave me the impression that the stifled flame of rebellion was
breaking free at last, but only when the food for it was exhausted. In
her trim and faded prettiness she was mildly tragic--futilely tragic
would perhaps be the better phrase. Life and Mrs. Longbow had sapped
her vitality; that was clear. They had taken much from her, and given
her little in exchange. I wondered fatuously whether she had chosen
well twenty years before in devoting herself to reform and her mother
rather than to me.
Doubtless I hesitated longer than was conventionally polite over
framing my reply, for she turned to me with a rather mocking laugh and
went on:
“It’s very sad about me, isn’t it? But you needn’t pity me, Robert. You
gave me a chance to get out once, you remember, and I chose to do good
to all the world instead of battening on you. It was foolish of me, but
it was probably a lucky thing for you.”
“I’ve never married, Margaret,” I answered, feeling somewhat grim and a
little uncomfortable.
“Pure habit, I suppose,” she answered lightly, “but it ought to give
you satisfaction that I’m sorry both of us haven’t. You needn’t be
frightened, even though Helen has the absurd notion of throwing me at
your head now. You see what I am--just dregs. Mother and Helen have
never got over thinking me a young girl, and they’ve always planned for
you to marry whatever was left of me after they’d finished.”
“I’ve never been very proud of my own behavior,” I put in. “I ought to
have been able to make you marry me back there, but--”
“You were no match for mother.” Margaret ended the sentence for me.
“Nobody ever was. But even she shouldn’t have expected to keep that old
affair in cold storage for twenty years. I’m a baby to be complaining,
but I can’t help it this once. Things are so terribly dead that I can
safely tell you now that you ought to marry--not that I suppose you
have been restrained on my account for some fifteen years! I’m merely
showing you my death-certificate in the hope that you’ll avoid my
unhappy end.”
“But, Margaret, what _are_ you going to do?” I cried, too disturbed by
the situation not to realize that she had diagnosed it correctly.
“Oh, as I’ve said, I’m going to inter myself decently in Italy, where I
shall probably write a book about my mother. I can stay away just so
much longer.”
At that moment the others came in and stopped whatever reply I could
have made.
“So sorry we had to leave you like this,” said Mrs. Bradford, sailing
majestically into the room; “but you are such an old friend that we
treat you like one of the family, you see.” She smiled in a way that
made her meaning plain.
“It doesn’t matter about Bob, of course,” said Charles, who was clearly
so much engrossed by his own affairs as to be impervious to anything
else. “He and Margaret ought to be able to entertain each other.”
“I think we do very well, thank you,” I remarked with a flicker of
amusement. “At least I do.”
Charles, quite serious and earnest, planted himself in full view of the
group of us.
“Look here,” he said “--all of you. I wish to talk to you about
mother’s biography.”
“Yes, indeed,” responded Mrs. Bradford, settling heavily into a chair,
“we ought to consider the matter at once. It was largely on account of
it that Henry and I took the time to come here to-night.” She assumed
her most business-like expression.
“There’s really nothing more to consider,” went on Charles, puckering
his forehead. “I simply wish to tell you that I have received an
excellent offer from Singleton for a work in two volumes, and have
accepted it. He will give a large sum for the book--a very large sum.”
“Charles,” said Helen Bradford, severely, “how can you speak of money
in such a connection? I think that you acted very unwisely in not first
consulting your family. As a matter of fact, your precipitate action is
very embarrassing, isn’t it, Henry?”
“You certainly should have told us that the offer had been made,”
concurred Bradford, looking aggrieved. “It does complicate things.”
“I can’t see why,” said Charles, with a sudden burst of anger. “I’m
mother’s executor, as well as her only son, and I surely have the right
to make my own arrangements about her biography. I thought at first
that some one outside the family ought to write it, but I’ve been
shown quite clearly that it is my duty to do it.”
Mrs. Bradford’s firm jaw dropped a little.
“_You_ do it!” she cried. “I’ve decided that it will be most suitable
for me to write it myself. In point of fact, Henry has already made
satisfactory arrangements for me with Banister. So you see--”
“I see,” said Charles, impatiently, “that you and Henry have been
meddling in the most unwarrantable fashion, quite as usual. You’ll have
to get out of it with Banister the best way you can, that’s all.”
Margaret’s even voice broke in on the dispute.
“It may interest you to know that I’m proposing to write a book about
mother myself. The Henrysons naturally wish one to go with their
edition of her writings, and they pay quite handsomely. What they
want isn’t a complete biography, you know--just the recollections of
a daughter. They seem to think me the one best qualified to do it.
Perhaps, after all, I am.”
“It is impossible!” exclaimed Helen Bradford. “I cannot allow this
thing to go on. At great personal inconvenience I have agreed to do
the book; and I refuse to be placed in the undignified position into
which you are trying to force me. I decided that I’d better write it
myself, partly because you seemed to be jealous about having Henry
do it. I have prepared to give valuable time to it. And what is my
reward? You have gone ahead secretly and made arrangements on your own
account not for one biography, but for two. I think it most selfish and
inconsiderate of you.”
“It will injure sales,” put in Henry Bradford, knowingly.
“Of course you don’t need to go ahead with yours, Helen, if you feel
like that,” said Margaret.
“I don’t see why--” began Mr. Bradford, but he was interrupted by his
wife.
“I don’t see why either. There _is_ no reason. I’m not going to let you
get all the honor and reward of it. What would people think of me?”
Margaret laughed.
“Only that you were too busy to write, my dear,” she remarked; “that
you had left it to less important members of the family.”
“I shall write the book in spite of you,” Mrs. Bradford replied. She
was furiously angry and a quite unlovely spectacle. A volcano in
eruption is not necessarily beautiful. “Mother always taught me,” she
continued, “never to be too busy to do my duty. I couldn’t bear to
think of leaving her great personality in the hands of either of you.
You are undutiful children.”
Charles Longbow’s frown had deepened, but he had regained his composure.
“I think, Helen,” he said, “that mother wouldn’t like to see us
quarreling like this. She believed in peace and calm.” For a moment his
natural generosity seemed to assert itself. “You are so much like her
that I can’t bear to have anything come between us. I’m sorry I didn’t
know you wanted to write the book.”
“You did very wrong in not consulting me,” replied Helen, with angry
dignity. “I was at least mother’s eldest child, and took a considerable
share in her great work. You ought to see Singleton and get him to
release you from your contract.”
“Perhaps Helen ought to have her own way,” remarked Margaret, wearily.
“She always has.”
“I’m certainly not going to change my arrangements now,” Charles
returned, with sudden stiffness. “I shall bring out a work in suitable
form, something on a scale worthy of mother. What is more, her journal
and all her papers are mine to do what I please with.”
“Come, Henry!” cried Mrs. Bradford. “You may like to have insults
heaped upon me, but I won’t remain to hear them.”
Magnificently, explosively, she swept from the room, followed close by
her husband. For a moment the brother and sister stood looking at each
other like naughty children apprehended in a fault. I was forgotten. At
length Margaret sank into the chair from which her sister had risen and
gave a nervous laugh.
“I hope you have enjoyed the entertainment we’ve been giving you,
Robert,” she said, turning her head in my direction. “This will be the
end of everything. All the same, Charlie dear, I hope you’ll let me
sort mother’s papers before I go away.”
“Oh, come, Charlie,”--I plucked up my courage to play the peacemaker,
for I felt that this dance on a newly made grave would disturb even
Mrs. Longbow’s serene and righteous soul,--“there’s no reason why Helen
shouldn’t write a book as well as you. The public will stand for it. I
hope you’ll tell her so.”
Charles’s solemn face cracked with a grin.
“I sha’n’t have to,” he said. “But I’m sorry you were here-you know
what I mean. I’m ashamed.”
I could not fail to see that his pride was touched to the
bleeding-point, and that Margaret was utterly weary. With only a
hand-shake and a word of parting I went away, glad enough, you can
understand, to make my escape.
I met none of them again till I went to the docks, a month later, to
say farewell to Margaret. Charles was with her, but Helen was not
there. Margaret looked very old and ill, I thought. Just before the
boat sailed, she managed to screen herself from her brother, and
hurriedly slipped an envelop into my hand.
“Please give this to Charlie when I’m well out to sea,” she whispered.
“I can’t bear to send it through the post-office.”
“How soon?” I asked under my breath, supposing her secrecy to be the
whim of a nervous invalid.
“Give me three days,” she replied, glancing furtively at her brother,
who was just then absorbed by the spectacle of a donkey-engine on a
lower deck. “It’s about mother’s journal and her papers. Don’t you
see? I looked them over,--Charlie told me to,--but I couldn’t bear to
explain to him, and I haven’t had time yet to copy them. My letter
tells about it.”
She turned from me quickly and took her brother’s arm, insisting that
both he and I must leave the ship at once. Twenty minutes later she
waved gaily to us as the cables slackened and the boat swung out into
the river.
I disliked my new commission, but I had been given no opportunity to
refuse it. At the time appointed I carried the letter to Charles,
whom I found in the family library amid heaps of faded and disorderly
manuscript. As I entered the room, he rose excitedly.
“It’s extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “Mother’s journals are gone, and so
is all her intimate correspondence. Where can Margaret have put them?
She went through everything.”
“Perhaps this will tell you,” I said, handing him the letter. “Margaret
gave it to me just before we left the boat, and told me to keep it till
to-day.”
He read the letter, frowning.
“What does the girl think!” he cried when he had ended. “It’s extremely
careless of her--she has carried off all of mother’s really important
papers; says she hadn’t finished arranging them, and will return them
when that’s done. She must be out of her head to think of trusting such
invaluable documents to any carrier in the world. And how does she
suppose I’m to go on with my book in the meantime? It’s mad.”
“I don’t quite see, myself,” I responded, though in reality I was able
to understand her motives: evidently she wished to spare Charles the
full light of their mother’s self-revelation.
“No one could see,” he returned, his lean cheeks flushed with anger.
“It’s impossible. It’s going to be a great inconvenience, even if the
things don’t get lost, and it may cost me a lot of money.”
“Can’t you be working through what’s left?” I asked. “There seems to be
a lot of material.”
“That’s just the trouble,” he replied. “Margaret has sorted everything,
and she’s left the rubbish--papers that couldn’t be of any use for the
book I’m engaged to write.”
I was sympathetic, and willing to give Margaret her due measure of
blame. If she had been less worn and flurried, she might have found
some more discreet way of protecting her brother’s happiness and her
mother’s reputation. Yet I rather admired her courage. I wondered
how she would manage to Bowdlerize the journal without exciting her
brother’s suspicions. I awaited the outcome with curiosity and some
misgivings. When I left Charles, he was writing a peremptory demand for
the immediate return of the papers.
My curiosity was amply satisfied, and my misgivings were realized, when
I received a letter from Margaret three weeks after she sailed. It was
post-marked Gibraltar, and it ran astoundingly:
Dear Robert:
I’m too ill to write, but I must. Try, if you can, to invent
some plausible excuse for me, and tell Charlie about it. I can’t
possibly write to him. I tried--I really tried--to arrange the
papers so that he’d get only a favorable impression from them; but
I couldn’t--and I couldn’t let him find mother out. If he had, he’d
have been hurt, and he’d have filled his book with reservations.
He’s terribly conscientious. I couldn’t bear to have poor mother’s
name injured, even if she did treat me badly. She did a lot of good
in her way, and she was rather magnificent. So one night I dropped
the papers overboard, journal and all. It’s a great deal better so.
I sha’n’t stop till I get to Assisi. Don’t let Charlie be angry
with me. I trust you to understand.
Ever sincerely yours,
~Margaret Longbow~.
I give the letter in full because it explains why no complete biography
of Mrs. Longbow has ever been published. Conscientious Charles,
naturally, has been unwilling to write a two-volume life without the
essential documents, and Margaret has never put her recollections into
a book. Helen Bradford’s pompous work, “The Public and Private Life
of My Mother,” hardly serves as a biography; it really gives more
information about Mrs. Bradford than about Mrs. Longbow. To supply the
public’s need of an intimate picture of the great philanthropist I have
here set down my impressions of her.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]