It was a morning in the middle of October when Dent and Pansy were
married.
The night before had been cool and clear after a rain and a
long-speared frost had fallen. Even before the sun lifted itself
above the white land, a full red rose of the sky behind the rotting
barn, those early abroad foresaw what the day would be. Nature had
taken personal interest in this union of her two children, who
worshipped her in their work and guarded her laws in their
characters, and had arranged that she herself should be present in
bridal livery.
The two prim little evergreens which grew one on each side of the
door-step waited at respectful attention like heavily powdered
festal lackeys. The scraggy aged cedars of the yard stood about in
green velvet and brocade incrusted with gems. The doorsteps
themselves were softly piled with the white flowers of the frost,
and the bricks of the pavement strewn with multitudinous shells and
stars of dew and air. Every poor stub of grass, so economically
cropped by the geese, wore something to make it shine. In the back
yard a clothes-line stretched between a damson and a peach tree,
and on it hung forgotten some of Pansy's father's underclothes; but
Nature did what she could to make the toiler's raiment look like
diamonded banners, flung bravely to the breeze in honor of his new
son-in-law. Everything--the duck troughs, the roof of the stable,
the cart shafts, the dry-goods box used as a kennel--had ugliness
hidden away under that prodigal revelling ermine of decoration.
The sun itself had not long risen before Nature even drew over that
a bridal veil of silver mist, so that the whole earth was left
wrapped in whiteness that became holiness.
Pansy had said that she desired a quiet wedding, so that she
herself had shut up the ducks that they might not get to Mrs.
Meredith. And then she had made the rounds and fed everything; and
now a certain lethargy and stupor of food quieted all creatures and
gave to the valley the dignity of a vocal solitude.
The botanist bride was not in the least abashed during the
ceremony. Nor proud: Mrs. Meredith more gratefully noticed this.
And she watched closely and discovered with relief that Pansy did
not once glance at her with uneasiness or for approval. The mother
looked at Dent with eyes growing dim. "She will never seem to be
the wife of my son," she said, "but she will make her children look
like his children."
And so it was all over and they were gone--slipped away through the
hiding white mists without a doubt of themselves, without a doubt
of each other, mating as naturally as the wild creatures who never
know the problems of human selection, or the problems that
civilization leaves to be settled after selection has been made.
Mrs. Meredith and Rowan and the clergyman were left with the father
and the children, and with an unexampled wedding collation--one of
Pansy's underived masterpieces. The clergyman frightened the
younger children; they had never seen his like either with respect
to his professional robes or his superhuman clerical voice--their
imaginations balancing unsteadily between the impossibility of his
being a man in a nightgown and the impossibility of his being a
woman with a mustache.
After his departure their fright and apprehensions settled on Mrs.
Meredith. They ranged themselves on chairs side by side against a
wall, and sat confronting her like a class in the public school
fated to be examined in deadly branches. None moved except when
she spoke, and then all writhed together but each in a different
way; the most comforting word from her produced a family spasm with
individual proclivities. Rowan tried to talk with the father
about crops: they were frankly embarrassed. What can a young man
with two thousand acres of the best land say to an old man with
fifty of the poorest?
The mother and son drove home in silence. She drew one of his
hands into her lap and held it with close pressure. They did not
look at each other.
As the carriage rolled easily over the curved driveway, through the
noble forest trees they caught glimpses of the house now standing
clear in afternoon sunshine. Each had the same thought of how
empty it waited there without Dent--henceforth less than a son, yet
how much more; more than brother, but how much less. How a brief
ceremony can bind separated lives and tear bound ones apart!
"Rowan," she said, as they walked slowly from the carriage to the
porch, she having clasped his arm more intimately, "there is
something I have wanted to do and have been trying to do for a long
time. It must not be put off any longer. We must go over the
house this afternoon. There are a great many things that I wish to
show you and speak to you about--things that have to be divided
between you and Dent."
"Not to-day! not to-day!" he cried, turning to her with quick
appeal. But she shook her head slowly, with brave cheerfulness.
"Yes; to-day. Now; and then we shall be over with it. Wait for me
here." She passed down the long hall to her bedroom, and as she
disappeared he rushed into the parlors and threw himself on a couch
with his hands before his face; then he sprang up and came out into
the hall again and waited with a quiet face.
When she returned, smiling, she brought with her a large bunch of
keys, and she took his arm dependently as they went up the wide
staircase. She led him to the upper bedrooms first--in earlier
years so crowded and gay with guests, but unused during later ones.
The shutters were closed, and the afternoon sun shot yellow shafts
against floors and walls. There was a perfume of lavender, of rose
leaves.
"Somewhere in one of these closets there is a roll of linen." She
opened one after another, looking into each. "No; it is not here.
Then it must be in there. Yes; here it is. This linen was spun
and woven from flax grown on your great-great-grandfather's land.
Look at it! It is beautifully made. Each generation of the family
has inherited part and left the rest for generations yet to come.
Half of it is yours, half is Dent's. When it has been divided
until there is no longer enough to divide, that will be the last of
the home-made linen of the old time. It was a good time, Rowan; it
produced masterful men and masterful women, not mannish women.
Perhaps the golden age of our nation will some day prove to have
been the period of the home-spun Americans."
As they passed on she spoke to him with an increasing, almost
unnatural gayety. He had a new appreciation of what her charm must
have been when she was a girl. The rooms were full of memories to
her; many of the articles that she caressed with her fingers, and
lingered over with reluctant eyes, connected themselves with days
and nights of revelry and the joy of living; also with prides and
deeds which ennobled her recollection.
"You and Dent know that your father divided equally all that he
had. But everything in the house is mine, and I have made no will
and shall not make any. What is mine belongs to you two alike.
Still, I have made a list of things that I think he would rather
have, and a list of things for you--merely because I wish to give
something to each of you directly."
In a room on a lower floor she unlocked a closet, the walls of
which were lined with shelves. She peeped in; then she withdrew
her head and started to lock the door again; but she changed her
mind and laughed.
"Do you know what these things are?" She touched a large box, and
he carried it over to the bed and she lifted the top off, exposing
the contents. "Did you ever see anything so _black_? This was
the clerical robe in which one of your ancestors used to read his
sermons. He is the one who wrote the treatise on 'God Properly and
Unproperly Understood.' He was the great seminarian in your
father's family--the portrait in the hall, you know. I shall not
decide whether you or Dent must inherit this; decide for
yourselves; I imagine you will end it in the quarrel. How black it
is, and what black sermons flew out of it--ravens, instead of white
doves, of the Holy Spirit. He was the friend of Jonathan Edwards."
She made a wry face as he put the box back into the closet; and she
laughed again as she locked it in.
"Here are some things from my side of the family." And she drew
open a long drawer and spoke with proud reticence. They stood
looking down at part of the uniform of an officer of the
Revolution. She lifted one corner of it and disclosed a sword
beneath. She lifted another corner of the coat and exposed a roll
of parchment. "I suppose I should have had this parchment framed
and hung up downstairs, so that it would be the first thing seen by
any one entering the front door; and this sword should have been
suspended over the fireplace, or have been exposed under a glass
case in the parlors; and the uniform should have been fitted on a
tailor's manikin; and we should have lectured to our guests on our
worship of our ancestors--in the new American way, in the
Chino-American way. But I'm afraid we go to the other extreme,
Rowan; perhaps we are proud of the fact that we are not boastful.
Instead of concerning ourselves with those who shed glory on us, we
have concerned ourselves with the question whether we are shedding
glory on them. Still, I wonder whether our ancestors may not
possibly be offended that we say so little about them!"
She led him up and down halls and from floor to floor.
"Of course you know this room--the nursery. Here is where you
began to be a bad boy; and you began before you can remember. Did
you never see these things before? They were your first
soldiers--I have left them to Dent. And here are some of Dent's
things that I have left to you. For one thing, his castanets. His
father and I never knew why he cried for castanets. He said that
Dent by all the laws of spiritual inheritance from his side should
be wanting the timbrel and harp--Biblical influence, you
understand; but that my influence interfered and turned timbrel and
harp into castanets. Do you remember the day when you ran away
with Dent and took him to a prize fight? After that you wanted
boxing-gloves, and Dent was crazy for a sponge. You fought him,
and he sponged you. Here is the sponge; I do not know where the
gloves are. And here are some things that belong to both of you;
they are mine; they go with me." She laid her hand on a little box
wrapped and tied, then quickly shut the closet.
In a room especially fragrant with lavender she opened a press in
the wall and turned her face away from him for a moment.
"This is my bridal dress. This was my bridal veil; it has been the
bridal veil of girls in my family for a good many generations.
These were my slippers; you see I had a large foot; but it was well
shaped--it was a woman's foot. That was my vanity--not to have a
little foot. I leave these things to you both. I hope each of you
may have a daughter to wear the dress and the veil." For the first
time she dashed some tears from her eyes. "I look to my sons for
sons and daughters."
It was near sunset when they stood again at the foot of the
staircase. She was white and tired, but her spirit refused to be
conquered.
"I think I shall He down now," she said, "so I shall say good night
to you here, Rowan. Fix the tray for me yourself, pour me out some
tea, and butter me a roll." They stood looking into each other's
eyes. She saw things in his which caused her suddenly to draw his
forehead over and press her lips to one and then to the other,
again and again.
The sun streamed through the windows, level and red, lighting up
the darkened hall, lighting up the head and shoulders of his mother.
An hour later he sat at the head of his table alone--a table
arranged for two instead of three. At the back of his chair waited
the aged servitor of the household, gray-haired, discreet, knowing
many things about earlier days on which rested the seal of
incorruptible silence. A younger servant performed the duties.
He sat at the head of his table and excused the absence of his
mother and forced himself with the pride and dignity of his race to
give no sign of what had passed that day. His mother's maid
entered, bringing him in a crystal vase a dark red flower for his
coat. She had always given him that same dark red flower after he
had turned into manhood. "It is your kind," she said; "I
understand."
He arranged the tray for her, pouring out her tea, buttering the
rolls. Then he forced himself to eat his supper as usual. From
old candlesticks on the table a silver radiance was shed on the
massive silver, on the gem-like glass. Candelabra on the
mantelpiece and the sideboard lighted up the browned oak of the
walls.
He left the table at last, giving and hearing a good night. The
servants efficiently ended their duties and put out the lights. In
the front hall lamps were left burning; there were lamps and
candles in the library. He went off to a room on the ground floor
in one ell of the house; it was his sitting room, smoking room, the
lounging place of his friends. In one corner stood a large desk,
holding old family papers; here also were articles that he himself
had lately been engaged on--topics relating to scientific
agriculture, soils, and stock-raising. It was the road by which
some of the country gentlemen who had been his forefathers passed
into a larger life of practical affairs--going into the Legislature
of the state or into the Senate; and he had thought of this as a
future for himself. For an hour or two he looked through family
papers.
Then he put them aside and squarely faced the meaning of the day.
His thoughts traversed the whole track of Dent's life--one straight
track upward. No deviations, no pitfalls there, no rising and
falling. And now early marriage and safety from so many problems;
with work and honors and wifely love and children: work and rest
and duty to the end. Dent had called him into his room that
morning after he was dressed for his wedding and had started to
thank him for his love and care and guardianship and then had
broken down and they had locked their arms around each other,
trying not to say what could not be said.
He lived again through that long afternoon with his mother. What
had the whole day been to her and how she had risen to meet with
nobility all its sadnesses! Her smile lived before him; and her
eyes, shining with increasing brightness as she dwelt upon things
that meant fading sunlight: she fondling the playthings of his
infancy, keeping some of them to be folded away with her at last;
touching her bridal dress and speaking her reliance on her sons for
sons and daughters; at the close of the long trying day standing at
the foot of the staircase white with weariness and pain, but so
brave, so sweet, so unconquerable. He knew that she was not
sleeping now, that she was thinking of him, that she had borne
everything and would bear everything not only because it was due to
herself, but because it was due to him.
He turned out the lights and sat at a window opening upon the
night. The voices of the land came in to him, the voices of the
vanished life of its strong men.
He remembered the kind of day it was when he first saw through its
autumn trees the scattered buildings of his university. What
impressions it had made upon him as it awaited him there, gray with
stateliness, hoary with its honors, pervaded with the very breath
and spirit of his country. He recalled his meeting with his
professors, the choosing of his studies, the selection of a place
in which to live. Then had followed what had been the great
spectacle and experience of his life--the assembling of picked
young men, all eager like greyhounds at the slips to show what was
in them, of what stuff they were made, what strength and hardihood
and robust virtues, and gifts and grace for manly intercourse. He
had been caught up and swept off his feet by that influence.
Looking back as he did to that great plateau which was his home,
for the first time he had felt that he was not only a youth of an
American commonwealth, but a youth of his whole country. They
were all American youths there, as opposed to English youths and
German youths and Russian youths. There flamed up in him the
fierce passion, which he believed to be burning in them all, to
show his mettle--the mettle of his state, the mettle of his nation.
To him, newly come into this camp of young men, it lay around the
walls of the university like a white spiritual host, chosen youths
to be made into chosen men. And he remembered how little he then
knew that about this white host hung the red host of those
camp-followers, who beleaguer in outer darkness every army of men.
Then had followed warfare, double warfare: the ardent attack on
work and study; athletic play, good fellowship, visits late at
night to the chambers of new friends--chambers rich in furniture
and pictures, friends richer in old names and fine manners and
beautiful boyish gallant ways; his club and his secret society, and
the whole bewildering maddening enchantment of student life, where
work and duty and lights and wine and poverty and want and flesh
and spirit strive together each for its own. At this point he put
these memories away, locked them from himself in their long silence.
Near midnight he made his way quietly back into the main hall. He
turned out the lamps and lighted his bedroom candle and started
toward the stairway, holding it in front of him a little above his
head, a low-moving star through the gloom. As he passed between
two portraits, he paused with sudden impulse and, going over to
one, held his candle up before the face and studied it once more.
A man, black-browed, black-robed, black-bearded, looked down into
his eyes as one who had authority to speak. He looked far down
upon his offspring, and he said to him: "You may be one of those
who through the flesh are chosen to be damned. But if He chooses
to damn you, then be damned, but do not question His mercy or His
justice: it is not for you to alter the fixed and the eternal."
He crossed with his candle to the opposite wall and held it up
before another face: a man full of red blood out to the skin;
full-lipped, red-lipped; audacious about the forehead and brows,
and beautiful over his thick careless hair through which a girl's
fingers seemed lately to have wandered. He looked level out at his
offspring as though he still stood throbbing on the earth and he
spoke to him: "I am not alive to speak to you with my voice, but I
have spoken to you through my blood. When the cup of life is
filled, drain it deep. Why does nature fill it if not to have you
empty it?"
He blew his candle out in the eyes of that passionate face, and
holding it in his hand, a smoking torch, walked slowly backward and
forward in the darkness of the hall with only a little pale
moonlight struggling in through a window here and there.
Then with a second impulse he went over and stood close to the dark
image who had descended into him through the mysteries of nature.
"You," he said, "who helped to make me what I am, you had the
conscience and not the temptation. And you," he said, turning to
the hidden face across the hall, "who helped to make me what I am,
you had the temptation and not the conscience. What does either of
you know of me who had both?
"And what do I know about either of you," he went on, taking up
again the lonely vigil of his walk and questioning; "you who
preached against the Scarlet Woman, how do I know you were not the
scarlet man? I may have derived both from you--both conscience and
sin--without hypocrisy. All those years during which your face was
hardening, your one sincere prayer to God may have been that He
would send you to your appointed place before you were found out by
men on earth. And you with your fresh red face, you may have lain
down beside the wife of your youth, and have lived with her all
your years, as chaste as she."
He resumed his walk, back and forth, back and forth; and his
thoughts changed:
"What right have I to question them, or judge them, or bring them
forward in my life as being responsible for my nature? If I roll
back the responsibility to them, had they not fathers? and had not
their fathers fathers? and if a man rolls back his deeds upon those
who are his past, then where will responsibility be found at all,
and of what poor cowardly stuff is each of us?"
How silent the night was, how silent the great house! Only his
slow footsteps sounded there like the beating of a heavy heart
resolved not to fail.
At last they died away from the front of the house, passing inward
down a long hallway and growing more muffled; then the sound of
them ceased altogether: he stood noiselessly before his mother's
door.
He stood there, listening if he might hear in the intense stillness
a sleeper's breathing. "Disappointed mother," he said as silently
as a spirit might speak to a spirit.
Then he came back and slowly began to mount the staircase.
"Is it then wrong for a man to do right? Is it ever right to do
wrong?" he said finally. "Should I have had my fling and never
have cared and never have spoken? Is there a true place for
deception in the world? May our hypocrisy with each other be a
virtue? If you have done evil, shall you live the whited
sepulchre? Ah, Isabel, how easily I could have deceived you! Does
a woman care what a man may have done, if he be not found out? Is
not her highest ideal for him a profitable reputation, not a
spotless character? No, I will not wrong you by these thoughts.
It was you who said to me that you once loved all that you saw in
me, and believed that you saw everything. All that you asked of me
was truthfulness that had no sorrow."
He reached the top of the stairs and began to feel his way toward
his room.
"To have one chance in life, in eternity, for a white name, and to
lose it!"