It was an evening that invited to reverie. The far stretches of the sea
were gray with mist, and the city itself, lying around the sweep of the
Bay, seemed dusky and distant. From her cottage window Alice Winthrop
looked silently at the open world around her. It seemed a long time
since she had heard Will Carman’s whistle. She wondered if he were still
angry with her. She was sorry that he had left her in anger, and yet not
sorry. If she had not made him believe that she was proud and selfish,
the parting would have been much harder; and perhaps had he known the
truth and realized that it was for his sake, and not for her own, that
she was sending him away from her, he might have refused to leave her at
all. His was such an imperious nature. And then they would have
married—right away. Alice caught her breath a little, and then she
sighed. But they would not have been happy. No, that could not have been
possible if his mother did not like her. When a gulf of prejudice lies
between the wife and mother of a man, that man’s life is not what it
should be. And even supposing she and Will could have lost themselves in
each other, and been able to imagine themselves perfectly satisfied with
life together, would it have been right? The question of right and wrong
was a very real one to Alice Winthrop. She put herself in the place of
the mother of her lover—a lonely elderly woman, a widow with an only
son, upon whom she had expended all her love and care ever since, in her
early youth, she had been bereaved of his father. What anguish of heart
would be hers if that son deserted her for one whom she, his mother,
deemed unworthy! Prejudices are prejudices. They are like diseases.
The poor, pale, elderly woman, who cherished bitter and resentful
feelings towards the girl whom her son loved, was more an object of pity
than condemnation to the girl herself.
She lifted her eyes to the undulating line of hills beyond the water.
From behind them came a silver light. “Yes,” said she aloud to
herself—and, though she knew it not, there was an infinite pathos in
such philosophy from one so young—“if life cannot be bright and
beautiful for me, at least it can be peaceful and contented.”
The light behind the hills died away; darkness crept over the sea. Alice
withdrew from the window and went and knelt before the open fire in her
sitting-room. Her cottage companion, the young woman who rented the
place with her, had not yet returned from town.
Alice did not turn on the light. She was seeing pictures in the fire,
and in every picture was the same face and form—the face and form of a
fine, handsome young man with love and hope in his eyes. No, not always
love and hope. In the last picture of all there was an expression which
she wished she could forget. And yet she would remember—ever—always—and
with it, these words: “Is it nothing to you—nothing—to tell a man that
you love him, and then to bid him go?”
Yes, but when she had told him she loved him she had not dreamed that
her love for him and his for her would estrange him from one who, before
ever she had come to this world, had pillowed his head on her breast.
Suddenly this girl, so practical, so humorous, so clever in every-day
life, covered her face with her hands and sobbed like a child. Two roads
of life had lain before her and she had chosen the hardest.
The warning bell of an automobile passing the cross-roads checked her
tears. That reminded her that Nellie Blake would soon be home. She
turned on the light and went to the bedroom and bathed her eyes. Nellie
must have forgotten her key. There she was knocking.
* * * * *
The chill sea air was sweet with the scent of roses as Mary Carman stood
upon the threshold of the little cottage, and beheld in the illumination
from within the young girl whom she had called “the Inferior Woman.”
“I have come, Miss Winthrop,” said she, “to beg of you to return home
with me. Will, reckless boy, met with a slight accident while out
shooting, so could not come for you himself. He has told me that he
loves you, and if you love him, I want to arrange for the prettiest
wedding of the season. Come, dear!”
“I am so glad,” said Mrs. Spring Fragrance, “that Will Carman’s bird is
in his nest and his felicity is assured.”
“What about the Superior Woman?” asked Mr. Spring Fragrance.
“Ah, the Superior Woman! Radiantly beautiful, and gifted with the divine
right of learning! I love well the Inferior Woman; but, O Great Man,
when we have a daughter, may Heaven ordain that she walk in the groove
of the Superior Woman.”