He drew out and wiped his glasses and reached for the local Sunday
paper, his Sunday evening Bible. He had read it in the morning,
but he always gleaned at night: he met so many of his friends by
reading their advertisements. But to-night he spread it across his
knees and turning to the table lifted the top of a box of cigars,
an orderly responsive family; the paper slipped to the floor and
lay forgotten behind his heels.
He leaned back in the chair with his cigar in his mouth and his
eyes directed toward the opposite wall, where in an oval frame hung
the life-size portrait of an old bulldog. The eyes were blue and
watery and as full of suffering as a seats; from the extremity of
the lower jaw a tooth stood up like a shoemaker's peg; and over the
entire face was stamped the majesty, the patience, and the manly
woes of a nature that had lived deeply and too long. The Judge's
eyes rested on this comrade face.
The events of the day had left him troubled. Any sermon on the
prodigal always touches men; even if it does not prick their
memories, it can always stir their imaginations. Whenever he heard
one, his mind went back to the years when she who afterwards became
Rowan's mother had cast him off, so settling life for him. For
after that experience he had put away the thought of marriage. "To
be so treated once is enough," he had said sternly and proudly.
True, in after years she had come back to him as far as friendship
could bring her back, since she was then the wife of another; but
every year of knowing her thus had only served to deepen the sense
of his loss. He had long since fallen into the habit of thinking
this over of Sunday evenings before going to bed, and as the end of
life closed in upon him, he dwelt upon it more and more.
These familiar thoughts swarmed back to-night, but with them were
mingled new depressing ones. Nothing now perhaps could have caused
him such distress as the thought that Rowan and Isabel would never
marry. All the love that he had any right to pour into any life,
he had always poured with passionate and useless yearnings into
Rowan's--son, of the only woman he had ever loved--the boy that
should have been his own.
There came an interruption. A light quick step was heard mounting
the stairs. A latch key was impatiently inserted in the hall door.
A bamboo cane was dropped loudly into the holder of the hat-rack; a
soft hat was thrown down carelessly somewhere--it sounded like a
wet mop flung into a corner; and there entered a young man
straight, slender, keen-faced, with red hair, a freckled skin,
large thin red ears, and a strong red mouth. As he stepped forward
into the light, he paused, parting the haircut of his eyes and
blinking.
"Good evening, uncle," he said in a shrill key.
"Well, sir."
Barbee looked the Judge carefully over; he took the Judge's hat and
cane from the table and hung them in the hall; he walked over and
picked up the newspaper from between the Judge's legs and placed it
at his elbow; he set the ash tray near the edge of the table within
easy reach of the cigar. Then he threw himself into a chair across
the room, lighted a cigarette, blew the smoke toward the ceiling
like the steam of a little whistle signalling to stop work.
"Well, uncle," he said in a tone in which a lawyer might announce
to his partner the settlement of a long-disputed point, "Marguerite
is in love with me!"
The Judge smoked on, his eyes resting on the wall.
"Yes, sir; in love with me. The truth had to come out sometime,
and it came out to-night. And now the joy of life is gone for me!
As soon as a woman falls in love with a man, his peace is at an
end. But I am determined that it shall not interfere with my
practice."
"What practice?"
"The practice of my profession, sir! The profession of yourself
and of the great men of the past: such places have to be filled."
"Filled, but not filled with the same thing."
"You should have seen the other hapless wretches there to-night!
Pining for a smile! Moths begging the candle to scorch them! And
the candle was as cold as the north star and as distant."
Barbee rose and took a turn across the room and returning to his
chair stood before it.
"If Marguerite had only waited, had concealed herself a little
longer! Why did she not keep me in doubt until I had won some
great case! Think of a scene like this: a crowded court room some
afternoon; people outside the doors and windows craning their necks
to see and hear me; the judge nervous and excited; the members of
the bar beside themselves with jealousy as I arise and confront the
criminal and jury. Marguerite is seated just behind the jury; I
know why she chose that seat: she wished to study me to the best
advantage. I try to catch her eye; she will not look at me. For
three hours my eloquence storms. The judge acknowledges to a tear,
the jurors reach for their handkerchiefs, the people in the court
room sob like the skies of autumn. As I finish, the accused arises
and addresses the court: 'May it please your honor, in the face of
such a masterly prosecution, I can no longer pretend to be
innocent. Sir (addressing me), I congratulate you upon your
magnificent service to the commonwealth. Gentlemen of the jury,
you need not retire to bring in any verdict: I bring it in myself,
I am guilty, and my only wish is to be hanged. I suggest that you
have it done at once in order that nothing may mar the success of
this occasion!' That night Marguerite sends for me: that would
have been the time for declaration! I have a notion that if I can
extricate myself without wounding this poor little innocent, to
forswear matrimony and march on to fame."
"March on to bed."
"Marguerite is going to give a ball, uncle, a brilliant ball merely
to celebrate this irrepressible efflux and panorama of her
emotions. Watch me at that ball, uncle! Mark the rising Romeo of
the firm when Marguerite, the youthful Juliet of this town--"
A hand waved him quietly toward his bedroom.
"Well, good night, sir, good night. When the lark sings at
heaven's gate I'll greet thee, uncle. My poor Marguerite!--Good
night, uncle, good night."
He was only nineteen.
The Judge returned to his thoughts.
He must have thought a long time: the clock not far away struck
twelve. He took off his glasses, putting them negligently on the
edge of the ash tray which tipped over beneath their weight and
fell to the floor: he picked up his glasses, but let the ashes lie.
Then he stooped down to take off his shoes, not without sounds of
bodily discomfort.
Aroused by these sounds or for other reasons not to be discovered,
there emerged from under a table on which was piled "The Lives of
the Chief Justices" a bulldog, cylindrical and rigid with years.
Having reached a decorous position before the Judge, by the slow
action of the necessary machinery he lowered the posterior end of
the cylinder to the floor and watched him.
"Well, did I get them off about right?"
The dog with a private glance of sympathy up into the Judge's face
returned to his black goatskin rug under the Chief Justices; and
the Judge, turning off the burners in the chandelier and striking a
match, groped his way in his sock feet to his bedroom--to the bed
with its one pillow.
V
Out in the country next morning it was not yet break of dawn. The
stars, thickly flung about, were flashing low and yellow as at
midnight, but on the horizon the great change had begun. Not with
colors of rose or pearl but as the mysterious foreknowledge of the
morning, when a vast swift herald rushes up from the east and
sweeps onward across high space, bidding the earth be in readiness
for the drama of the sun.
The land, heavy with life, lay wrapped in silence, steeped in rest.
Not a bird in wet hedge or evergreen had drawn nimble head from
nimble wing. In meadow and pasture fold and herd had sunk down
satisfied. A black brook brawling through a distant wood sounded
loud in the stillness. Under the forest trees around the home of
the Merediths only drops of dew might have been heard splashing
downward from leaf to leaf. In the house all slept. The mind,
wakefullest of happy or of suffering things, had lost consciousness
of joy and care save as these had been crowded down into the
chamber which lies beneath our sleep, whence they made themselves
audible through the thin flooring as the noise of dreams.
Among the parts of the day during which man may match the elements
of the world within him to the world without--his songs with its
sunrises, toil with noontide, prayer with nightfall, slumber with
dark--there is one to stir within him the greatest sense of
responsibility: the hour of dawn.
If he awaken then and be alone, he is earliest to enter the silent
empty theatre of the earth where the human drama is soon to
recommence. Not a mummer has stalked forth; not an auditor sits
waiting. He himself, as one of the characters in this ancient
miracle play of nature, pauses at the point of separation between
all that he has enacted and all that he will enact. Yesterday he
was in the thick of action. Between then and now lies the night,
stretching like a bar of verdure across wearying sands. In that
verdure he has rested; he has drunk forgetfulness and self-renewal
from those deep wells of sleep. Soon the play will be ordered on
again and he must take his place for parts that are new and
confusing to all. The servitors of the morning have entered and
hung wall and ceiling with gorgeous draperies; the dust has been
sprinkled; fresh airs are blowing; and there is music, the living
orchestra of the living earth. Well for the waker then if he can
look back upon the role he has played with a quiet conscience, and
as naturally as the earth greets the sun step forth upon the stage
to continue or to end his brief part in the long drama of destiny.
The horizon had hardly begun to turn red when a young man,
stretched on his bed by an open window, awoke from troubled sleep.
He lay for a few moments without moving, then he sat up on the edge
of the bed. His hands rested listlessly on his kneecaps and his
eyes were fixed on the sky-line crimsoning above his distant woods.
After a while he went over and sat at one of the windows, his eyes
still fixed on the path of the coming sun; and a great tragedy of
men sat there within him: the tragedy that has wandered long and
that wanders ever, showing its face in all lands, retaining its
youth in all ages; the tragedy of love that heeds not law, and the
tragedy of law forever punishing heedless love.
Gradually the sounds of life began. From the shrubs under his
window, from the orchard and the wet weeds of fence corners, the
birds reentered upon their lives. Far off in the meadows the
cattle rose from their warm dry places, stretched themselves and
awoke the echoes of the wide rolling land with peaceful lowing. A
brood mare in a grazing lot sent forth her quick nostril call to
the foal capering too wildly about her, and nozzled it with
rebuking affection. On the rosy hillsides white lambs were leaping
and bleating, or running down out of sight under the white sea-fog
of the valleys. A milk cart rattled along the turnpike toward the
town.
It had become broad day.
He started up and crossed the hall to the bedroom opposite, and
stood looking down at his younger brother. How quiet Dent's sleep
was; how clear the current of his life had run and would run
always! No tragedy would ever separate him and the woman he loved.
When he went downstairs the perfect orderliness of his mother's
housekeeping had been before him. Doors and windows had been
opened to the morning freshness, sweeping and dusting had been
done, not a servant was in sight. His setters lay waiting on the
porch and as he stepped out they hurried up with glistening eyes
and soft barkings and followed him as he passed around to the barn.
Work was in progress there: the play of currycombs, the whirl of
the cutting-box, the noise of the mangers, the bellowing of calves,
the rich streamy sounds of the milking. He called his men to him
one after another, laying out the work of the day.
When he returned to the house he saw his mother walking on the
front pavement; she held flowers freshly plucked for the breakfast
table: a woman of large mould, grave, proud, noble; an ideal of her
place and time.
"Is the lord of the manor ready for his breakfast?" she asked as
she came forward, smiling.
"I am ready, mother," he replied without smiling, touching his lips
to her cheek.
She linked her arm in his as they ascended the steps. At the top
she drew him gently around until they faced the landscape rolling
wide before them.
"It is so beautiful!" she exclaimed with a deep narrow love of her
land. "I never see it without thinking of it as it will be years
hence. I can see you riding over it then and your children playing
around the house and some one sitting here where we stand, watching
them at their play and watching you in the distance at your work.
But I have been waiting a long time for her to take my place--and
to take her own," and she leaned heavily on his arm as a sign of
her dependence but out of weakness also (for she did not tell him
all). "I am impatient to hear the voice of your children, Rowan.
Do you never wish to hear them yourself?"
As they stood silent, footsteps approached through the hall and
turning they saw Dent with a book in his hand.
"Are you grand people never coming to breakfast?" he asked,
frowning with pretended impatience, "so that a laboring man may go
to his work?"
He was of short but well-knit figure. Spectacles and a thoughtful
face of great refinement gave him the student's stamp. His
undergraduate course at college would end in a few weeks.
Postgraduate work was to begin during the summer. An assistant
professorship, then a full professorship--these were successive
stations already marked by him on the clear track of life; and he
was now moving toward them with straight and steady aim. Sometimes
we encounter personalities which seem to move through the discords
of this life as though guided by laws of harmony; they know neither
outward check nor inward swerving, and are endowed with that
peaceful passion for toil which does the world's work and is one of
the marks of genius.
He was one of these--a growth of the new time not comprehended by
his mother. She could neither understand it nor him. The pain
which this had given him at first he had soon outgrown; and what
might have been a tragedy to another nature melted away in the
steady sunlight of his entire reasonableness. Perhaps he realized
that the scientific son can never be the idol of a household until
he is born of scientific parents.
As mother and elder son now turned to greet him, the mother was not
herself aware that she still leaned upon the arm of Rowan and that
Dent walked into the breakfast room alone.
Less than usual was said during the meal. They were a reserved
household, inclined to the small nobilities of silence. (It is
questionable whether talkative families ever have much to say.)
This morning each had especial reason for self-communing.
When they had finished breakfast and came out into the hall. Dent
paused at one of the parlor doors.
"Mother" he said simply, "come into the parlor a moment, will you?
And Rowan, I should like to see you also."
They followed him with surprise and all seated themselves.
"Mother," he said, addressing Her with a clear beautiful light in
his gray eyes, yet not without the reserve which he always felt and
always inspired, "I wish to tell you that I am engaged to Pansy
Vaughan. And to tell you also, Rowan. You know that I finish
college this year; she does also. We came to an understanding
yesterday afternoon and I wish you both to know it at once. We
expect to be married in the autumn as soon as I am of age and a man
in my own right. Mother, Pansy is coming to see you; and Rowan, I
hope you will go to see Pansy. Both of you will like her and be
proud of her when you know her."
He rose as though he had rounded his communication to a perfect
shape. "Now I must get to my work. Good morning," and with a
smile for each he walked quietly out of the room. He knew that he
could not expect their congratulations at that moment and that
further conference would be awkward for all. He could merely tell
them the truth and leave the rest to the argument of time.
"But I cannot believe it, Rowan! I cannot!"
Mrs. Meredith sat regarding' her elder son with incredulity and
distress. The shock of the news was for certain reasons even
greater to him; so that he could not yet command himself
sufficiently to comfort her. After a few moments she resumed: "I
did not know that Dent had begun to think about girls. He never
said so. He has never cared for society. He has seemed absorbed
in his studies. And now--Dent in love. Dent engaged, Dent to be
married in the autumn--why, Rowan, am I dreaming, am I in my
senses? And to this girl! She has entrapped him--poor, innocent,
unsuspecting Dent! My poor, little, short-sighted bookworm."
Tears sprang to her eyes, but she laughed also. She had a mother's
hope that this trouble would turn to comedy. She went on quickly:
"Did you know anything about this? Has he ever spoken to you about
it?"
"No, I am just as much surprised. But then Dent never speaks in
advance."
She looked at him a little timidly: "I thought perhaps it was this
that has been troubling you. You have been trying to hide it from
me."
He dropped his eyes quickly and made no reply.
"And do you suppose he is in earnest, Rowan?"
"He would never jest on such a subject."
"I mean, do you think he knows his own mind?"
"He always does."
"But would he marry against my wishes?"
"He takes it for granted that you will be pleased: he said so."
"But how can he think I'll be pleased? I have never spoken to this
girl in my life. I have never seen her except when we have passed
them on the turnpike. I never spoke to her father but once and
that was years ago when he came here one cold winter afternoon to
buy a shock of fodder from your father."
She was a white character; but even the whiteness of ermine gains
by being necked with blackness. "How can he treat me with so
little consideration? It is just as if he had said: 'Good morning,
mother. I am going to disgrace the family by my marriage, but I
know you will be delighted---good morning.'"
"You forget that Dent does not think he will disgrace the family.
He said you would be proud of her."
"Well, when the day comes for me to be proud of this, there will
not be much left to be ashamed of. Rowan, for once I shall
interfere."
"How can you interfere?"
"Then you must: you are his guardian."
"I shall not be his guardian by the autumn. Dent has arranged this
perfectly, mother, as he always arranges everything."
She returned to her point. "But he _must_ be kept from making such
a mistake! Talk to him as a man. Advise him, show him that he
will tie a millstone around his neck, ruin his whole life. I am
willing to leave myself out and to forget what is due me, what is
due you, what is due the memory of his father and of my father: for
his own sake he must not marry this girl."
He shook his head slowly. "It is settled, mother," he added
consolingly, "and I have so much confidence in Dent that I believe
what he says: we shall be proud of her when we know her."
She sat awhile in despair. Then she said with fresh access of
conviction: "This is what comes of so much science: it always tends
to make a man common in his social tastes. You need not smile at
me in that pitying way, for it is true: it destroys aristocratic
feeling; and there is more need of aristocratic feeling in a
democracy than anywhere else: because it is the only thing that can
be aristocratic. That is what science has done for Dent! And this
girl I--the public school has tried to make her uncommon, and the
Girl's College has attempted, to make her more uncommon; and now I
suppose she actually thinks she _is_ uncommon: otherwise she would
never have imagined that she could marry a son of mine. Smile on,
I know I amuse you! You think I am not abreast of the times. I am
glad I am not. I prefer my own. Dent should have studied for the
church--with his love of books, and his splendid mind, and his
grave, beautiful character. Then he would never have thought of
marrying beneath him socially; he would have realized that if he
did, he could never rise. Once in the church and with the right
kind of wife, he might some day have become a bishop: I have always
wanted a bishop in the family. But he set his heart upon a
professorship, and I suppose a professor does not have to be
particular about whom he marries."
"A professor has to be particular only to please himself--and the
woman. His choice is not regulated by salaries and congregations."
She returned to her point: "You breed fine cattle and fine sheep,
and you try to improve the strain of your setters. You know how
you do it. What right has Dent to injure his children in the race
for life by giving them an inferior mother? Are not children to be
as much regarded in their rights of descent as rams and poodles?"
"You forget that the first families in all civilizations have kept
themselves alive and at the summit by intermarriage with good,
clean, rich blood of people whom they have considered beneath them."
"But certainly my family is not among these. It is certainly alive
and it is certainly not dying out. I cannot discuss the subject
with you, if you once begin that argument. Are you going to call
on her?"
"Certainly. It was Dent's wish and it is right that I should."
"Then I think I shall go with you, Rowan. Dent said she was coming
to see me; but I think I should rather go to see her. Whenever I
wished to leave, I could get away, but if she came here, I
couldn't."
"When should you like to go?"
"Oh, don't hurry me! I shall need time--a great deal of time! Do
you suppose they have a parlor? I am afraid I shall not shine in
the kitchen in comparison with the tins."
She had a wry face; then her brow cleared and she added with relief:
"But I must put this whole trouble out of my mind at present! It
is too close to me, I cannot even see it. I shall call on the girl
with you and then I shall talk quietly with Dent. Until then I
must try to forget it. Besides, I got up this morning with
something else on my mind. It is not Dent's unwisdom that
distresses me."
Her tone indicated that she had passed to a more important topic.
If any one had told her that her sons were not equally dear, the
wound of such injustice would never have healed. In all that she
could do for both there had never been maternal discrimination; but
the heart of a woman cannot help feeling things that the heart of a
mother does not; and she discriminated as a woman. This was
evident now as she waived her young son's affairs.
"It is not Dent that I have been thinking of this morning," she
repeated. "Why is it not you that come to tell me of your
engagement? Why have you not set Dent an example as to the kind of
woman he ought to marry? How many more years must he and I wait?"
They were seated opposite each other. He was ready for riding out
on the farm, his hat on his crossed knees, gloves and whip in hand.
Her heart yearned over him as he pulled at his gloves, his head
dropped forward so that his face was hidden.
"Now that the subject has come up in this unexpected way, I want to
tell you how long I have wished to see you married. I have never
spoken because my idea is that a mother should not advise unless
she believes it necessary. And in your case it has not been
necessary. I have known your choice, and long before it became
yours, it became mine. She is my ideal among them all. I know
women, Rowan, and I know she is worthy of you and I could not say
more. She is-high-minded and that quality is so rare in either
sex. Without it what is any wife worth to a high-minded man? And
I have watched her. With all her pride and modesty I have
discovered her secret--she loves you. Then why have you waited?
Why do you still wait?"
He did not answer and she continued with deeper feeling:
"Life is so uncertain to all of us and of course to me! I want to
see you wedded to her, see her brought here as mistress of this
house, and live to hear the laughter of your children." She
finished with solemn emotion: "It has been my prayer, Rowan."
She became silent with her recollections of her own early life for
a moment and then resumed:
"Nothing ever makes up for the loss of such years--the first years
of happy marriage. If we have had these, no matter what happens
afterward, we have not lived for nothing. It becomes easier for us
to be kind and good afterward, to take an interest in life, to
believe in our fellow-creatures, and in God."
He sprang up.
"Mother, I cannot speak with you about this now." He turned
quickly and stood with his back to her, looking out of doors; and
he spoke over his shoulder and his voice was broken: "You have had
one disappointment this morning: it is enough. But do not think of
my marrying--of my ever marrying. Dent must take my place at the
head of the house. It is all over with me! But I cannot speak
with you about this now," and he started quickly to leave the
parlors. She rose and put her arm around his waist, walking beside
him.
"You do not mind my speaking to, you about this, Rowan?" she said,
sore at having touched some trouble which she felt that he had long
been hiding from her, and with full respect for the privacies of
his life.
"No, no, no!" he cried, choking with emotion. "Ah, mother,
mother!"--and he gently disengaged himself from her arms.
She watched him as he rode out of sight. Then she returned and sat
in the chair which he had, quitted, folding her hands in her lap.
For her it was one of the moments when we are reminded that our
lives are not in our keeping, and that whatsoever is to befall us
originates in sources beyond our power. Our wills may indeed reach
the length of our arms or as far as our voices can penetrate space;
but without us and within us moves one universe that saves us or
ruins us only for its own purposes; and we are no more free amid
its laws than the leaves of the forest are free to decide their own
shapes and season of unfolding, to order the showers by which they
are to be nourished and the storms which shall scatter them at last.
Above every other she had cherished the wish for a marriage between
Rowan and Isabel Conyers; now for reasons unknown to her it seemed
that this desire was never to be realized. She did not know the
meaning of what Rowan had just said to her; but she did not doubt
there was meaning behind it, grave meaning. Her next most serious
concern would have been that in time Dent likewise should choose a
wife wisely; now he had announced to her his intention to wed
prematurely and most foolishly; she could not altogether shake off
the conviction that he would do what he had said he should.
As for Dent it was well-nigh the first anxiety that he had ever
caused her. If her affection for him was less poignant, being
tenderness stored rather than tenderness exercised, this resulted
from the very absence of his demand for it. He had always needed
her so little, had always needed every one so little, unfolding his
life from the first and drawing from the impersonal universe
whatever it required with the quietude and efficiency of a
prospering plant. She lacked imagination, or she might have
thought of Dent as a filial sunflower, which turned the blossom of
its life always faithfully and beautifully toward her, but stood
rooted in the soil of knowledge that she could not supply.
What she had always believed she could see in him was the
perpetuation under a new form of his father and the men of his
father's line.
These had for generations been grave mental workers: ministers,
lawyers, professors in theological seminaries; narrow-minded,
strong-minded; upright, unbending; black-browed, black-coated; with
a passion always for dealing in justice and dealing out justice,
human or heavenly; most of all, gratified when in theological
seminaries, when they could assert themselves as inerrant
interpreters of the Most High. The portraits of two of them hung
in the dining room now, placed there as if to watch the table and
see that grace was never left unsaid, that there be no levity at
meat nor heresy taken in with the pudding. Other portraits were
also in other rooms--they always had themselves painted for
posterity, seldom or never their wives.
Some of the books they had written were in the library, lucid
explanations of the First Cause and of how the Judge of all the
earth should be looked at from without and from within. Some that
they had most loved to read were likewise there: "Pollock's Course
of Time"; the slow outpourings of Young, sad sectary; Milton, with
the passages on Hell approvingly underscored--not as great poetry,
but as great doctrine; nowhere in the bookcases a sign of the
"Areopagitica," of "Comus," and "L'Allegro"; but most prominent the
writings of Jonathan Edwards, hoarsest of the whole flock of New
World theological ravens.
Her marriage into this family had caused universal surprise. It
had followed closely upon the scandals in regard to the wild young
Ravenel Morris, the man she loved, the man she had promised to
marry. These scandals had driven her to the opposite extreme from
her first choice by one of life's familiar reactions; and in her
wounded flight she had thrown herself into the arms of a man whom
people called irreproachable. He was a grave lawyer, one of the
best of his kind; nevertheless he and she, when joined for the one
voyage of two human spirits, were like a funeral barge lashed to
some dancing boat, golden-oared, white-sailed, decked with flowers.
Hope at the helm and Pleasure at the prow.
For she herself had sprung from a radically different stock: from
sanguine, hot-blooded men; congressmen shaping the worldly history
of their fellow-beings and leaving the non-worldly to take care of
itself; soldiers illustrious in the army and navy; hale country
gentlemen who took the lead in the country's hardy sports and
pleasures; all sowing their wild oats early in life with hands that
no power could stay; not always living to reap, but always leaving
enough reaping to be done by the sad innocent who never sow;
fathers of large families; and even when breaking the hearts of
their wives, never losing their love; for with their large open
frailties being men without crime and cowardice, tyrannies,
meannesses.
With these two unlike hereditary strains before her she had, during
the years, slowly devised the maternal philosophy of her sons.
Out of those grave mental workers had come Dent--her student. She
loved to believe that in the making of him her own blood asserted
itself by drawing him away from the tyrannical interpretation of
God to the neutral investigation of the earth, from black theology
to sunlit science--so leaving him at work and at peace, the
ancestral antagonisms becoming neutralized by being blended.
But Rowan! while he was yet a little fellow, and she and her young
husband would sit watching him at play, characteristics revealed
themselves which led her to shake her head rebukingly and say: "He
gets these traits from you." At other times contradictory
characteristics appeared and the father, looking silently at her,
would in effect inquire: "Whence does he derive these?" On both
accounts she began to look with apprehension toward this son's
maturing years. And always, as the years passed, evidence was
forced more plainly upon her that in him the two natures he
inherited were antagonistic still; each alternately uppermost; both
in unceasing warfare; thus endowing him with a double nature which
might in time lead him to a double life. So that even then she had
begun to take upon herself the burden of dreading lest she should
not only be the mother of his life, but the mother of his
tragedies. She went over this again and again: "Am I to be the
mother of his tragedies?"
As she sat this young summer morning after he had left her so
strangely, all at once the world became autumn to her remembrance.
An autumn morning: the rays of the sun shining upon the silvery
mists swathing the trees outside, upon the wet and many-colored
leaves; a little frost on the dark grass here and there; the first
fires lighted within; the carriage already waiting at the door; the
breakfast hurriedly choked down--in silence; the mournful noise of
his trunk being brought downstairs--his first trunk. Then the
going out upon the veranda and the saying good-by to him; and
then--the carriage disappearing in the silver mists, with a few red
and yellow leaves whirled high from the wheels.
That was the last of the first Rowan,--youth at the threshold of
manhood. Now off for college, to his university in New England.
As his father and she stood side by side (he being too frail to
take that chill morning ride with his son) he waved his hand
protectingly after him, crying out: "He is a good boy." And
she, having some wide vision of other mothers of the land who
during these same autumn days were bidding God-speed to their
idols--picked youth of the republic--she with some wide vision of
this large fact stood a proud mother among them all, feeling sure
that he would take foremost place in his college for good honest
work and for high character and gentle manners and gallant
bearing--with not a dark spot in him.
It was toward the close of the first session, after she had learned
the one kind of letter he always wrote, that his letters changed.
She could not have explained how they were changed, could not have
held the pages up to the inspection of any one else and have said,
"See! it is here." But she knew it was there, and it stayed there.
She waited for his father to notice it; but if he ever noticed it,
he never told her: nor did she ever confide her discovery to him.
When vacation came, it brought a request from Rowan that he might
be allowed to spend the summer with college friends farther
north--camping, fishing, hunting, sailing, seeing more of his
country. His father's consent was more ready than her own. The
second session passed and with the second vacation the request was
renewed. "Why does he not come home? Why does he not wish to come
home?" she said, wandering restlessly over the house with his
letter in her hands; going up to his bedroom and sitting down in
the silence of it and looking at his bed--which seemed so strangely
white that day--looking at all the preparations she had made for
his comfort. "Why does he not come?"
Near the close of the third session he came quickly enough,
summoned by his father's short fatal illness.
Some time passed before she observed anything in him but natural
changes after so long an absence and grief over his great loss. He
shut himself in his room for some days, having it out alone with
himself, a young man's first solemn accounting to a father who has
become a memory. Gradually there began to emerge his new care of
her, and tenderness, a boy's no more. And he stepped forward
easily into his place as the head of affairs, as his brother's
guardian. But as time wore on and she grew used to him as so much
older in mere course of nature, and as graver by his loss and his
fresh responsibilities, she made allowances for all these and
brushed them away and beheld constantly beneath them that other
change.
Often while she sat near him when they were reading, she would look
up and note that unaware a shadow had stolen out on his face. She
studied that shadow. And one consolation she drew: that whatsoever
the cause, it was nothing by which he felt dishonored. At such
moments her love broke over him with intolerable longings. She
remembered things that her mother had told her about her father;
she recalled the lives of her brothers, his uncles. She yearned to
say: "What is it, Rowan? You can tell me anything, anything. I
know so much more than you believe."
But some restraint dissuaded her from bridging that reserve. She
may have had the feeling that she spared him a good deal by her not
knowing.
For more than a year after his return he had kept aloof from
society--going into town only when business demanded, and accepting
no invitations to the gayeties of the neighborhood. He liked
rather to have his friends come out to stay with him: sometimes he
was off with them for days during the fishing and hunting seasons.
Care of the farm and its stock occupied a good deal of his leisure,
and there were times when he worked hard in the fields--she thought
so unnecessarily. Incessant activity of some kind had become his
craving--the only ease.
She became uneasy, she disapproved. For a while she allowed things
to have their way, but later she interfered--though as always with
her silent strength and irresistible gentleness. Making no comment
upon his changed habits and altered tastes, giving no sign of her
own purposes, she began the second year of his home-coming to
accept invitations for herself and formally reentered her social
world; reassumed her own leadership there; demanded him as her
escort; often filled the house with young guests; made it for his
generation what the home of her girlhood had been to her--in all
sacrificing for him the gravity and love of seclusion which had
settled over her during the solemn years, years which she knew to
be parts of a still more solemn future.
She succeeded. She saw him again more nearly what he had been
before the college days--more nearly developing that type of life
which belonged to him and to his position.
Finally she saw him in love as she wished; and at this point she
gradually withdrew from society again, feeling that he needed her
no more.