have been a generous and kindly man if he had prospered, and with
nothing to bring it to the surface he might have gone through life, his
lack of sterling principle unsuspected. He could be generous but not
just; he could recognize the rights of others--the right of tradesmen
to be paid, the rights of his political comrades to a fulfilment of his
promises to them--_if_ everything went well with himself. But to tell
the truth in the teeth of disaster, to face an irate creditor, to climb
down from his height of vain ambition and lay to heart that vow of duty
his childish lips had uttered at his mother's knee--"To labor truly
to get my own living, and do my duty in that state of life to which it
shall please God to call me"--this was what William May had not it in
him to perform. And his wife, with her clear moral sense, her unbending
Puritan conscience, was doomed to see him fail.
It was not the loss of her money that pained her so much when on the
next pay-day she handed him her check in very pity and sorrow for
his "bad luck." It was the feeling that do what she would, work as
she might, they would never be any better off. And the still more
dreary revelation that as her energy was more feverishly applied his
diminished. The more earnest and eager she grew to pay off their
increasing debts and establish system in their ways, the more careless
he became.
She furbished up her wedding gown and made engagements to sing at
parlor entertainments. She gave private lessons. And she made money.
Some of it she handled herself, but most of it was "put in the
bank," and drawn out for a strange purpose: one she disapproved and
disbelieved in utterly, but could not positively oppose.
He was so boyishly eager about it, so confident of his success. Through
activity unprecedented and maneuverings he did not care to remember,
Mr. May had been put up for State senator from his district, and in
all the bustle of officering small meetings and petty "bossing," his
spirits were so high, and he was so good-humored and affectionate that
his wife had not the heart to tell him that this was the worst waste of
time in which he had yet engaged. For to her sane, cautious mind it was
apparent from the first that he had not the shadow of a chance of being
elected.
It happened that on the very eve of the election she was engaged to
sing at Carnegie Hall. He could not possibly spare time to take her,
and she went down alone, in a car. Her eyes were very bright and a
spot of color burned in each cheek. She was beautiful, with the beauty
of spirit that has triumphed over flesh. But a physician in the
audience whispered to his wife that that lovely woman was far along in
consumption. "And she will go quick, too, poor thing!"
The troublesome cough which she had neglected all winter annoyed her
more than usual going home, but she was rather shocked than grieved
when in the middle of the night a hemorrhage came on. Life was growing
hard and duty perplexing. But sheer force of will and affection made
her seem better next day, and she would not hear of her husband staying
with her. He was pledged to appear elsewhere and she made him go. He
did not come in till after midnight, and then--she sat up in sudden
terror, listening to that stumbling step, those mumbling speeches! It
was not only his election that May had lost that night; his manhood had
followed.
Laura turned her face to the wall. Was life to hold this new horror?
Ah, that she might escape the next day, with its shame, its sorrow
and its pitiful regrets. But what she expected did not come. May was
constitutionally incapable of confessing himself at fault. He slept off
his intoxication and did not get up until he was quite himself again,
cool and non-committal.
"Bad luck again, girlie," he said with an assumption of indifference.
"I can't make you Mrs. Senator this time."
"Poor Will!" the wife murmured. "I am sorry, dear."
"You are better?" he asked hastily, struck with her expression. "You
must have the doctor."
It was a tardy suggestion, and Laura smiled sadly. The doctor came,
however. But all he could do was to hold out those vague hopes which
are no comfort to anxious hearts. Before long her mother was sent for,
but the dread disease did its rapid work. Laura's great trial to the
last was the terrible sense of responsibility that haunted her about
the expenses that were being incurred.
"When I am not here, mother, what will he do? Poor fellow, nobody
understands him but me."
A little while afterwards she aroused herself from a fit of musing and
murmured:
"This awful feeling of helplessness!--and I tried so hard to set things
right. I thought when I had a little income of my own that everything
would go well."
"You have killed yourself," said her mother, darting a look of reproach
at the unconscious husband, who entered the room at this moment.
"Oh, no, don't say that," Laura whispered. "I only did what I wanted to
do. Will and I have been very happy, only----" But neither the mother
nor the husband, bending over the bed, heard the rest of the sentence.
THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA.[6]
UPON the Virginia side of the Potomac River, five miles across from
Washington City whose twinkling lights can be distinctly seen by night,
lies a little farm of about twenty-five acres, owned by a widow and her
three daughters, Caroline, Minnie and Rosa.
The dwelling is a villa rather than a farm-house, with wide verandas
that are the favorite sitting-rooms of the family in summer. The
glimpse they catch of the river traffic and of the far-off city gives
them a cheerful feeling of nearness to active life, while they are
removed from its noise and crowds.
Besides this property Widow Jones had found herself possessed, at her
husband's death, of an immense tract of unproductive land down on
Chesapeake Bay which could not be sold until Rosa, the younger girl,
now eighteen, came of age. Meanwhile, the taxes vexed her soul.
Hospitable, easy-going and accustomed to consider luxuries positive
necessities, the family would have been severely straitened if it had
not been for the nicety with which their various talents helped one
another out.
Caroline had excellent business ability and managed all the outside
affairs. She drew the dividends on their railway stock, parleyed with
lawyers, and engaged and settled with the hired men. In the burning
August weather, when a dozen red-shirted Negroes were to be cared for,
this slender young girl, in flaring straw hat and short gingham dress,
mounted her horse and rode up and down the fields, a keen-eyed, cheery,
sweet-voiced overseer. Regardless of her own meals she helped old black
Jessie prepare the meals for the men in the little cabin, and there
was no complaint as to quality or quantity under her liberal rule. She
did the marketing also and bought the other supplies. Then Mrs. Jones
took up the work, and her deft fingers and good taste converted crude
materials into food and raiment for the quartet. She was a notable
housekeeper and the best of neighbors, her round, jolly visage being
sure to appear at every moment of need, and her chicken broth and
jellies lingered pleasantly in the memory of the fretful convalescent.
Minnie's function was the care of all the live animals on the farm.
She had unerring judgment concerning mules and horses, understood the
peculiarities of cows, and knew everything worth knowing about poultry
and bees. She was a plump, happy-looking blonde, with a lovely hand, a
neat foot, and a playfully witty tongue that, like her own bees, never
stung the wise but kept fools at bay. Alert and busy from morning till
night she gave no thought to the admirers who sighed for her smiles,
but laughingly turned them over to Rosa, who had, she said, nothing
else to do but to make herself charming.
Rosa was the strongest possible contrast to her energetic sisters.
Rarely beautiful, and gifted with an artistic faculty that nearly
approached genius, she was apparently utterly devoid of ambition or
sense of responsibility, and was content to be waited upon and cared
for as if she was still the petted infant whose graces had at the
outset won the willing service of every one about her.
Her form was of medium height, but so symmetrical that she appeared
taller than she was. Her head was borne on her full, white throat with
a sort of dreamy grace, bent it almost seemed by the weight of her
magnificent tresses, the color of ripe wheat when the sun is shining
upon it, and falling a quarter of a yard below her waist. Her eyes were
of a deep, dark brown, with the softness of a Newfoundland dog's when
he is gazing wistfully at his master. It would have been as impossible
to say anything harsh to Rosa, when she opened those great dark eyes
and looked at you, as it would be to strike a dove or a gazelle or
a sweet young baby. Usually the heavy, blue-veined lids half veiled
them, and as her seashell cheeks warmed to their pinkest tone, and her
exquisite bow of a mouth fell slightly apart, as she lay, as she loved
to do, in the hammock on the west veranda, an artist would have thought
her the very embodiment of love's young dream of sweet, maidenly beauty.
She seemed all softness and gentleness. Perhaps only her mother
knew what strength of will and temper lay behind Rosa's placid brow
and square little chin. There had been some stout tussels between a
determined little mother and a rosebud of a baby in the years gone by;
and although the match might have seemed an unequal one, the result had
always been the same. "A compromise," Major Jones had laughingly called
it, meaning, as he explained once in a candid moment, that the rosebud
had its own way.
Rosa's way was only passively, not actively objectionable. All she
asked was to be let alone; allowed to paint undisturbed in her untidy
attic studio when the whim seized her, and to lie in the hammock like
a kitten, dozing the hours away when she did not choose to exert
herself. Occasionally she would have spells of helpfulness, and for
several days her stool and box of colors would be set up beside the
parlor or dining-room doorway, while she decorated the pannels with
sprays of wistaria and masses of fern, so true to nature that one
wondered where a little country girl had ever learned to paint after
such a manner.
One warm afternoon in early September she was sitting on her stool in
the hall, which ran through the middle of the house from end to end,
putting slow, effective touches to a border above the dado which she
had begun in the spring, and with characteristic indifference had left
unfinished until now. Caroline, just in from a tour to the orchard, had
thrown herself down upon the settee to rest, and was exchanging remarks
with her mother about a certain dress trimming which the elder lady had
under way when she suddenly broke off to exclaim:
"If there isn't Mr. Brent coming, and not a speck of meat in the house!
Now, I suppose I shall have to go to town to market. I should think
it was enough for him to be here every Sunday and Wednesday, without
dropping upon us between whiles."
"Let Jessie kill a chicken," suggested Mrs. Jones, soothingly.
"But you know he doesn't eat chickens. If he was like any civilized
American he would. But nothing except a round of raw beef satisfies his
English appetite!"
But despite this small grumble, she smiled cordially as a good-looking,
middle-aged man with a vigorous, florid face, set off by a pair of
heavy black whiskers, came briskly up the path and included all of them
in a general, informal bow.
"Do you like omelet?" she asked reflectively, as he took a seat near
Rosa, and began commenting upon her work with an easy censorship which
was evidently not disagreeable to her.
He gave a little shudder. "'I'll no pullet sperm in my brew,'" he
quoted.
"Oh, I might have known you for a Falstaff," retorted Caroline, rising.
"Well, Mamma, I'm off."
"Not on my account, Miss Caroline. See here, I've brought my animal
diet with me, knowing that you ladies subsist on tea and fruit when I'm
not about." And from his coat pocket he drew a roll of brown paper,
three-quarters of a yard long, and held it out.
"Prime bologna," he added, complacently, as both mother and daughter
laughed heartily, and Rosa turned to give one of her slow, sweet smiles.
Brent was a "family friend." The major had made his acquaintance at
his club and brought him home to dine one day when Rosa was a winsome,
tumbling baby; and although he had grown grayer and stouter during the
years he had been coming out to the farm, ostensibly to oversee Rosa's
painting--for which he never would hear of compensation--he had not
faltered in a certain purpose conceived soon after that first visit,
and as unsuspected by Mrs. Jones and her two elder daughters as it was
patent to Rosa herself.
There were some rare affinities between them, even aside from their
painting. Brent's British phlegm was mellowed by a luxuriance of
imagination that he had inherited from an East Indian mother. His
temperament was a mixture of vigor, warmth and languor; and while he
was not in the least degree adaptable, he had a faculty of changing
the atmosphere of a company to suit himself; so that if others were
not pleased it seemed to be they, not he, who was out of place. If
they yielded up their individuality to his, well and good; if not,
they dropped out of the talk; that was all. Brent was a fluent and
entertaining talker. He liked to tell stories of tiger hunts and other
jungle pastimes; and Rosa, reclining with her dreamy eyes half shut,
liked to listen and feel herself pleasantly thrilled and excited
without other necessity than to give up her mind to follow where he led.
Her education had been desultory and superficial. Brent had played the
largest part in it, and he had molded her nature at his pleasure by
catering to certain biases that he had perceived to be unchangeable,
and for the rest giving her the side of life and affairs which he
preferred her to believe. What other experiences he had had besides
those he chose to tell them, these innocent women neither conjectured
nor troubled themselves to inquire. It was enough that he had been "the
major's friend."
He had lodgings in town, but his landlady scarcely ever saw him; for
when he was not roaming around upon one of his sketching tours he
seemed to live in the Corcoran Art Gallery, where Rosa painted under
his superintendence several hours each week. He had really devoted
himself to the girl's development with a zeal beyond what would have
appeared to be necessary in the "family friend." Perhaps Rosa thanked
him in private, for she never did so before the others. She treated him
always with the same indolent familiarity, and accepted his advice,
his help and his devotion as a mere matter of course; but she generally
did as he bade her.
This afternoon she continued to fill in her charcoal outlines until she
grew tired, and then, dropping her brushes, slipped to a cushion and,
crossing her hands behind her head, leaned back and looked up at him
like a weary seraph.
"Lazy child," said Brent, smiling, and taking her dropped brushes.
"That stem is well done, Rosa; but I want you to leave flowers for a
while and begin on that study of the nurse and child. It is time for
you to begin to think less of technic and study the masters. I wish you
could go abroad now."
"You have made me think of nothing but technic," said the girl.
"Certainly. There are many stages in art, and that is the preliminary
one. But you are now to make an advance. How little you realize your
advantages. If I had your genius!"
"I realize one advantage--having you for a teacher," she said in a low
tone.
The others had dropped away, and they were by themselves.
Brent moved closer to her. "Have you thought of what I talked to you
about?"
"It's no use to talk about that; I rather think they expect me to make
a great match, some time. Mamma wouldn't consider you eligible, you
know," she drawled, softly, with smooth, matchless insolence.
Brent looked at her with an expression she did not understand; but she
never troubled herself about what was beyond her easy comprehension.
And herein Brent had vastly the advantage; he understood her to the
depths of her nature, and he knew perfectly that he had made himself an
essential part of her existence. But he was wise enough to be patient.
For the present he allowed her to waive the subject aside; nor did
he betray even by the quiver of an eyelash that she had wounded his
self-love. Indeed, their temperaments were much alike, and neither one
was troubled with sensitiveness. Of the two the robust, mastiff-like
man had more than the brown-eyed angel, who now took to the hammock
and left him to finish her work; for it was as natural for him to work
as it was for her to be idle.
"You must get settled in town early this fall," he said to the mother,
when the family had assembled again on the veranda after dinner. "I
have laid out a good winter's work for Rosa at the gallery, and I want
her to start as soon as possible."
"Mr. Brent, I admire your coolness," commented Caroline. "If you expect
Rosa to put in a steady winter's work you must have suddenly created a
remarkable change in her."
"I really don't see how we are to go to town at all this winter," said
Mrs. Jones, wrinkling her pretty forehead. "The Farleys haven't yet
positively pledged themselves to take the place, as we depended on
their doing; and of course we can't go unless we let this house."
"Oh, the Farleys will take the place," said Brent confidently. "And
there is a nice little house on "H" Street that will be vacant about
the first of October. I wish you would go in to-morrow and look at it."
"Give me the address," said Caroline. "I have to go in town to-morrow,
and I'll take a peep at it. Then, if it seems worth while for you to
take the trouble, mamma dear, you can go in next week."
"Only don't let it slip through your fingers," counseled Brent. "Rosa,
don't you want to take a little walk up the hill and see the sunset?"
"Get the wheelbarrow!" said Minnie, briskly. "You'll never get Rosa to
climb the hill."
But Brent continued to look smilingly at Rosa, and, somewhat to their
surprise, she got up and went with him. As they began to climb the
gentle slope he took hold of her arm, and she leaned against him with
the same unconcern with which she would have accepted aid from one of
her sisters. They were gone half an hour, and when they came back a
close observer might have noted a satisfied look in Brent's face. He
had made a slight, very slight, advance in his plans, whatever they
were.
It was in accordance with them that the family moved into the little
house on "H" Street within a fortnight. Every afternoon saw Rosa seated
before a Corot in the main gallery of the Corcoran Art Building, and
for at least two hours she was busily occupied. Just how it came about
no one could have said. Perhaps Rosa herself was not aware of the
tightening of a leash which had been woven securely about her, and
that had guided and now held her to certain duties. Once, as he sat
beside her, painting away upon his small canvas with those minute,
exquisite touches which characterized his style, Brent said, with some
significance:
"You work very well under direction, Rosa; but you wouldn't set a
stroke if I were not here, would you?"
She laughed, and turned her eyes upon him inquiringly. "Wouldn't I?"
she asked; "ah, well, perhaps not. But then, you see, you _are_ here."
"You have grown so used to having me always at hand, that you couldn't
get on at all without me, could you?"
"Get on without you?" she repeated. "Why, I never thought of it."
The next day he let her think of it. For a week he was absent on a
sketching tour. When he returned he discovered that she had taken a
vacation also; and then, for the first time in her life, he said a
few stern words to her. They were very few, and without any hint of
anger; but the girl crimsoned, and opened her eyes pathetically. Any
other man would have been self-condemned; but Brent, while instantly
resuming his usual manner, did not lessen the effect of his rebuke; and
from this time her manner toward him began to undergo a change. It was
imperceptible to others, but apparent to Brent. She was no longer so
sweetly insolent to him; she was more timid, more tractable; and she
attended more steadily to her work, seeming to set a new value upon the
praise of which he had always been lavish.
The winter passed and the enervating air of April crept over the city.
One afternoon Rosa threw down her brushes petulantly, exclaiming that
she could not make another stroke.
Brent quietly gathered her implements and his own and stored them
neatly away. Then he laid his hand over hers and said, in a perfectly
matter-of-fact tone:
"Let's go and get married, Rosa?"
For a minute they looked at one another in silence. Then her eyes
dropped to her dress, a pink print, fresh and crisp under the great
gray apron which she had begun to untie.
"What! In a calico dress?" she said.
"Yes, just as you are; and now."
"What will they say at home?"
"Think how much trouble we are going to save your mother. We will tell
them this evening. Come, Rosa, I have been waiting for you a good many
years; don't keep me waiting any longer."
"It is dreadfully absurd," she observed. "What will you do with me?"
"Take you abroad next week, and when we come back settle you down
in the prettiest little house you ever saw. I have bought one up on
Capitol Hill, and you shall be its little mistress."
"I don't like housekeeping," remarked Rosa; but she was walking with
him toward the door. Suddenly she stopped. "We can't get married
without a license, can we?"
"I have the license," said Brent, touching his waistcoat pocket. "I got
it yesterday."
"It seems to me," she said, pouting a little, "You were rather
premature. How did you know I would have you?"
"I believed in my lucky star. We were meant for each other, my dear."
She was silent after this. They walked half-a-dozen squares and stopped
before a house next to a church. As Brent rang the bell he saw that the
girl was trembling slightly, and he lost no time in getting her into
the parlor, where a puzzled minister came to them a moment or so later.
Brent explained and produced the license. Rosa was nineteen and her
father was not living. There was no delay, and in the presence of the
minister's wife and daughter (who took the bride for a pretty servant
girl and were condescending) the ceremony was performed. But for the
heavy ring that encircled her finger the girl might have believed that
she was dreaming, as Brent drew her out of the house again and hailed a
passing horse-car to take them to her mother's house.
Minnie opened the door, and through the dusk her quick eyes perceived
something unusual in her sister; but Brent, giving her no time for
questions, drew his wife into the little parlor, where the widow sat
with her sewing.
"Mrs. Jones," he said calmly, "Rosa and I are married." As she got up
hastily, the color rushing to her face, he added, "I believe my old
friend the major would not have refused to give me his daughter."
It was a stroke of genius. Instead of uttering the angry words upon
her lips the widow fell back upon her chair, crying. The major, dead,
was not less the family oracle; and even the girls, who had burst into
exclamations, and were not to be repressed for half an hour or so, felt
that, irregular and shocking as the affair was, yet there was within it
a grain of amelioration.
"But that she should have got married in a sixpenny calico!" exclaimed
Caroline, tearfully. "I never shall get over that."
"I will buy her a gown or two in Paris," said the new brother-in-law.
"We shall sail next week, and be gone a year, or perhaps longer."
But three years passed before the little house on Capitol Hill had to
be vacated by its tenant in favor of the owners, who walked in upon the
Jones family one day, when the harvest apples were ripe, and the two
girls sat upon the porch of the farm-house paring a bowlful of them for
supper.
"What is the change in Rosa?" mother and sisters asked each other when
the pair had gone back to town the next morning. Mrs. Brent was even
more beautiful than she had been as a girl. She did not look unhappy.
Yet there was a difference.