AN OLD-FASHIONED MORTGAGE
Pretty Sue Clayton with her ringlets and rosy cheeks had not been
Oliver's only listener.
His mother had been sitting inside the drawing-room, just beside the
open window. She had spoken to Sue and Oliver when they first mounted
the steps, and had begged them both to come in, but they had forgotten
her presence. Unintentionally, therefore, she had heard every word of
the conversation. Her old fears rushed over her again with renewed
force. She had never for a moment supposed that Oliver wanted to be a
painter--like Mr. Crocker! Now at last she understood his real object
in talking to Lavinia the night of the musical.
"Richard," she called softly to her husband sitting in the adjoining
room, in the chair that Malachi, in accordance with the old custom, had
with his sweeping bow made ready for him. The inventor had been there
since tea was over, lying back in his seat, his head resting on his
hand. He had had one of his thoughtful days, worrying over some detail
of his machine, still incomplete. The new device of which he had told
her with such glee had failed, as had the others. The motor was still
incomplete.
"Richard," she repeated.
"Yes, my dear," he answered, in his gentle voice. He had not heard her
at first.
"Bring your chair over here."
The inventor rose instantly and, crossing the room, took a seat beside
her, his hand finding hers in the dark.
"What is this you have been saying to Oliver about artists being great
men?" she asked. "He's got a new idea in his head now--he wants to be a
painter. I've thought for some time that Mr. Crocker was not a proper
person for him to be so much with. He has evidently worked on the boy's
imagination until he has determined to give up the law and study art."
"How do you know?"
"I've just heard him tell Sue Clayton so. All he wants now is my
consent--he says he has yours."
The inventor paused, and gently smoothed his wife's fingers with his
own.
"And you would not give it?" he inquired.
"How could I? It would ruin him--don't you know it?" There was a slight
tinge of annoyance in her voice--not one of fault-finding, but rather
of anxiety.
"That depends, my dear, on how well he could succeed," he answered,
gently.
"Why, Richard!" She withdrew her hand quickly from his caressing touch,
and looked at him in undisguised astonishment. "What has his SUCCEEDING
to do with it? Surely you cannot be in earnest? I am willing he should
do anything to make his living, but not that. No one we know has ever
been a painter. It is neither respectable nor profitable. You see what
a dreadful existence Mr. Crocker leads--hardly an associate in town,
and no acquaintances for his daughter, and he's been painting ever
since he was a boy. Oliver could not earn a penny at such work."
"Money is not everything, my dear, nor social recognition. There are
many things I would value more."
"What are they?" She was facing him now, her brows knit, a marked
antagonism in her voice.
"Good manners and good taste, Sallie, and kindly consideration for
another's feelings," he answered. He spoke calmly and kindly, as was
his custom. He had lived almost all his life with this high-strung
Sallie Horn, whose eyes flashed now and then as they had done in the
old days when he won her hand. He knew every side of her temperament.
"Good manners, and good taste"--he repeated, as if wishing to emphasize
his thoughts--"Oliver has all of these, and he has, besides, loyalty to
his friends. He never speaks of Mr. Crocker but with affection, and I
love to hear him. That man is an artist of great talent, and yet it
seems to be the fashion in this town to ridicule him. If Ollie has any
gifts which would fit him to be a painter, I should be delighted to see
him a painter. It is a profession despised now, as are many others, but
it is the profession of a gentleman, for all they say, and a noble
one!" Then he stopped and said, thoughtfully, as if communing with
himself--"I wish he could be a painter. Since Gilbert Stuart's time we
have had so few men of whom we can boast. This country will one day be
proud to honor her artists."
Mrs. Horn sank back in her chair. She felt the hopelessness of all
further discussion with her husband. "He would not have talked this way
ten years ago," she said to herself. "Everything has gone wrong since
he left the law." But to her husband she said:
"You always measure everything by your hopes, Richard, and you never
look at the practical side of anything. Ollie is old enough to begin to
think how he will earn his bread. I see now how hopeless it is for us
to try and make a lawyer of him--his heart is not in it. I have come
little by little to the conclusion that what he wants most is hard
work, and he wants it right away, just as soon as we can find something
for him to do--something with his hands, if necessary, not something
full of dreams and imaginings," and her voice rose in its earnestness.
"I am getting more and more anxious about him every day," she added,
suddenly controlling herself, "and when you encourage him in foolish
vagaries you only make it harder for me, dear," and her voice softened
and broke with emotion.
"He ought to have gone into the laboratory, Sallie," Richard added
quickly, in a reflective tone--laying his hand on her shoulder as he
noticed the change of voice--"just as I wanted him to do when he left
school. There is a future for scientific men in this country which you
do not see--a future which few around me seem to see. Great changes are
coming, not only in science, but in the arts and in all useful
knowledge. If Ollie can add to the brilliancy of this future by
becoming a brilliant painter, able to help educate those about him,
there could be no higher calling for him. Three things are coming, my
dear--perhaps four." The inventor had risen from his seat and stood
beside her, his eyes turned away into the dark as if he were addressing
some unseen person. "The superseding of steam, aerial locomotion, and
the education of the common people, black and white. One other may
come--the freeing of the slaves--but the others are sure. Science, not
money, nor family traditions, nor questions of birth, will shape the
destinies of the country. We may not live to see it, but Oliver will,
and I want him to be where he can help on the movement. You were
opposed to his becoming a scientist, and I feel assured made a mistake.
Don't stand in his way again, dear."
"Yes, Richard, I was opposed to it, because I did not want him to waste
his time over all sorts of foolish experiments, which would
certainly--" She did not finish the sentence. Her anxiety had not yet
gone as far as that. With a quick gesture she rose from her chair and
drawing her white gossamer shawl about her shoulders--left the room and
walked out onto the front steps, followed by Richard.
If the inventor heard the thrust he did not reply. He would not argue
with his wife over it, nor did it check the flow of his courtesy. She
had never seen the value of what he was striving for, but she would in
time he knew.
"Yes, I think it is cooler out here," was all he said, as he placed a
cushion to soften her seat on the threshold. When he had arranged
another pillow behind her back and hunted round the dark parlor for a
stool for her feet, he found a chair for himself and sat down beside
her. She thanked him, but her thoughts were evidently far away. She was
weighing in her mind what must be her next move if Oliver persisted in
this new departure. Richard broke the silence.
"I haven't told you of the good offer I've had for the farm, Sallie."
"No, but we're not going to sell it, of course." She was leaning back
against the jamb of the door as she spoke, the shawl hanging loose, her
delicate white hands in her lap. It was an idle answer to an idle
question, for her mind was still with Oliver.
"Well, I hadn't thought of doing so until to-day," he answered, slowly,
"but I had a notice from the bank that they must call in the mortgage,
and so I thought I might as well sell the whole place, pay off the
debt, and use the balance for--"
"Sell the farm, Richard?" It was her hand now that sought his, and with
a firm grasp as if she would restrain him then and there in his purpose.
"Yes, I can get several thousand dollars over and above the mortgage,
and I need the money, Sallie. It will only be a temporary matter--" and
he smoothed her arm tenderly, speaking as a lover of long standing
might do who is less absorbed with the caress than with the subject
under discussion. "The motor will be ready in a few weeks--as soon as
the new batteries are finished. Then, my dear, you won't have to
curtail your expenses as you have done." His voice was full of hope
now, a smile lighting his face as he thought of all the pleasure and
comfort his success would bring her.
"But you said that same thing when you were working on the steam-valve,
for which you put that very mortgage on the farm, and now that's all
gone and--"
"The failure of the steam-valve, as I have always told you, was due to
my own carelessness, Sallie. I should have patented it sooner. They are
making enormous sums on it, I hear, and are using my cut-off, and I
think dishonestly. But the motor has been protected at every new step
that I have taken. My first patent of August 13, 1856, supersedes all
others, and cannot be shaken. Now, my dear, don't worry about it--you
have never known me to fail, and I won't now. Besides, you forget my
successes, Sallie--the turbine water-wheel and the others. It will all
come, right."
"It will never come right." She had risen from her seat, and was
standing over, him, both hands on his shoulders, her eyes looking down
into his, her voice trembling. "Oh, Richard, Richard! Give up this life
of dreams you are living, and go back to your law-office. You always
succeeded in the law. This new career of yours is ruining us. I can
economize, dear, just as I have always done," she added, with another
sudden change of tone, bending over him and slipping her hand
caressingly into his. "I will do everything to help you. I did not mean
to be cross a moment ago. I was worried about Oliver's talk. I have
been silent so long--I must speak. Don't be angry, dear, but you must
keep the farm. I will go myself and see about the mortgage at the
bank--we cannot--we must not; go on this way--we will have nothing
left."
He patted her arm again in his gentle way--not to calm her fears, he
knew so well that she was wrong, but to quiet the nerves that he
thought unstrung.
"But I need this extra money for some improvements which I--"
"Yes, I know you THINK so, but you don't, Richard, you don't? For
Heaven's sake, throw the motor out into the street, and be done with
it. It will ruin us all if things go on as they have done."
The inventor raised his eyes quickly. He had never seen her so
disturbed in all their married life. She had never spoken in this way
before.
"Don't excite yourself, Sallie," he said, gravely, and with a certain
air of authority in his manner. "You'll bring on one of your
headaches--it will all come right. Come, my dear, let us go into the
house. People are passing, and will wonder."
She followed him back into the drawing-room, his hand still held fast
in hers.
"Promise me one thing," she said, stopping at the door and looking up
into his eyes, "and I won't say another word. Please do nothing more
about the farm unless you let me know. Let me think first how I can
help. It will all come out right, as you say, but it will be because we
will make it come right, dear." She drew his face down toward her with
one hand and kissed him tenderly on his cheek. Then she bade him
good-night and resumed her seat by the window, to watch for Oliver's
return.
Try as she would, she could not banish her fears. The news of Richard's
intention to pay off the loan by selling the farm had sent a shudder
through her heart such as she had never before experienced, for that
which she had dreaded had come to pass. Loyal as she had always been to
her husband, and proud as she was of his genius and accomplishments,
and sympathetic as they were in all else that their lives touched upon,
her keen, penetrating mind had long since divined the principal fault
that lay at the bottom of her husband's genius. She saw that the weak
point in his make-up was not his inventive quality, but his inability
to realize any practical results from his inventions when perfected.
She saw, too, with equal certainty how rapidly their already slender
means were being daily depleted in costly experiments--many of which
were abandoned as soon as tried, and she knew full well that the end
was but a question of time. Even when he had abandoned the law, and had
exchanged his office near the Court-house for his shop in the back
yard, and had given his library to his young students, she had not
despaired; she still had faith in his genius.
She had first become uneasy when the new steam cut-off had failed to
reimburse him. When this catastrophe was followed by his losing every
dollar of his interest in the improved cotton-gin, because of his
generosity to a brother inventor, her uneasiness had become the keenest
anxiety. And now here was this new motor, in which he seemed more
absorbed than in any other of his inventions. This was to plunge them
into still greater difficulties and jeopardize even the farm.
Richard had not been disturbed by it all. Serene and hopeful always,
the money question had counted for nothing with him. His compensation
lay in the fact that his theories had been proved true. More-over,
there were, he knew, other inventions ahead, and more important
discoveries to be made. If money were necessary, these new inventions
would supply it. Such indifference to practical questions was an agony
to one of her temperament, burdened as she was by the thought of their
increasing daily expenses, the magnitude of which Richard never seemed
to appreciate.
And yet until to-night, when Richard had made his announcement about
the mortgage, she had made no protest, uttered no word of censure.
Neither had any jar or discord ever disturbed the sweet harmony of
their home-life. And she had only behaved as any other wife in Kennedy
Square would have done in like circumstances. Remonstrances against a
husband's business methods were never made in the best families. In his
own house Richard was master. So she had suffered on and held her
peace, while Richard walked with his head in the clouds, unconscious of
her doubts. The situation must now be met, and she determined to face
it with all her might. "The farm shall not be sacrificed, if I can help
it," she kept repeating to herself; "any economy is better than that
disaster."
When at last the shock of the news of the threatened disaster had
passed, and she had regained her customary composure, she decided to
act at once and at head-quarters, outside of Richard's help or
knowledge. She would send for Colonel Clayton, one of the directors of
the bank, in the morning, and see what could be done to postpone for a
time the bank's action. This would give her time to think what next
could best be done to save the property. This settled in her mind, she
gave herself up to the more important and pressing need of the
moment--the dissuading of Oliver from this new act of folly.
At the end of an hour she was still sitting by the drawing-room window,
straining her eyes across the Square, noting every figure that passed
into the radiance of the moonlight, her mind becoming clearer as her
indomitable will, which had never failed her in domestic crises, began
to assert itself.
When her eye fell at last upon her son, he was walking with swinging
gait up the long path across the Square, whistling as he came, his
straw hat tilted on one side, his short coat flying free. He had taken
Sue home, and the two had sat on her father's steps in the moonlight
long after the other boys and girls had scattered to their homes. The
Colonel had come in while they were talking, and had bade them
good-night and gone up to bed.
Girl as she was, Sue already possessed that subtle power of unconscious
coquetry which has distinguished all the other Sue Claytons of all the
other Kennedy Squares the South over since the days of Pocahontas. She
had kept Oliver's mind away from the subject that engrossed him, and on
herself; and when, at last, standing between the big columns of the
portico she had waved her hand, good-night, and had gained his promise
to stop in the morning on his way to the office, for just another word,
she felt sure that his every thought was of her. Then she had closed
the big front door--she was the last person in the house awake--and
tripped upstairs, not lighting her candle until she had peeped through
her shutters, and had found him standing on the other side of the
street looking toward the house. He made a handsome picture of a lover,
as he stood in the moonlight, and Sue smiled complacently to herself at
the delicate attention paid her, but Oliver's eyes, the scribe is
ashamed to say, were not fixed on the particular pair of green blinds
that concealed this adorable young lady, certainly not with any desire
to break through their privacy. One of the unforgivable sins--nay, one
of the impossible sins--about Kennedy Square would have been to have
recognized a lady who looked, even during the daytime, out from a
bedroom window: much less at night. That was why Sue did not open her
blinds.
Nor, indeed, was Oliver occupied with the question of Sue's blinds at
all. He had for the moment in fact completely forgotten the existence
of his lady-love. He was, if the truth must be told, studying the
wonderful effect of the white light of the moon flooding with its
radiance the columns and roof of the Clayton house, the dark magnolias
silhouetted against the flight of steps and the indigo-blue of the sky.
He had already formulated in his mind the palette with which he would
paint it, and had decided that the magnolias were blue-black and not
green, and the steps greenish-white. He had, furthermore, determined to
make an outline of it in the daylight, and talk to Mr. Crocker about
it. Sue's eyes, which but a moment before had so charmed him, no longer
lingered in his memory--nor even in any one of the far corners of his
head and heart. It was only when her light flashed up that he awoke to
the realization of what he was doing, and even this breach of good
manners was forgotten by him in his delight over the effect which the
red glow of the candle gave to the whole composition.
With the picture clearly stamped upon his brain, he turned and stepped
quickly across the Square, and in another moment he had thrown his
mother a kiss through the window, and rushing inside had caught her in
his arms.
"Poor motherkins--and you all alone," he cried. "Why, I thought you and
father had gone to bed long ago."
"No, son--I was waiting for you." He laid his fresh young face against
hers, insisting that she must go to bed at once; helping her upstairs
awkwardly, laughing as he went--telling her she was the sweetest girl
he ever knew and his best sweetheart--kissing her pale cheeks as they
climbed the steps together to his room.
She had determined, as she sat by the window, to talk to him of what
she had overheard him say to Sue, and of her anxiety over Richard's
revelations, but his joyous kiss had robbed her of the power. She would
wait for another time--she said to herself--not to-night, when he was
so happy.
"Anybody at Sue's, Ollie?" she asked, lighting his candle.
"Only the boys and girls--Tom Pitts, Charley Bowman, Nellie Talbot, and
one or two others. The Colonel came in just before I left."
"But the Colonel will be home to-morrow, will he not?" she asked,
quickly, as if something forgotten had been suddenly remembered.
"Yes--think so--" answered Oliver, taking off his coat and hanging it
over the chair--"because he was just up from Pongateague. He and Major
Pitts got thirty-seven woodcock in two days. Tom wants me to go down
with him some day next week."
A shade of anxiety crossed the mother's face.
"What did you tell him, son?" She moved a chair nearer the bureau and
sat down to watch him undress, as she had always done since the day she
first tucked him into his crib.
"Oh, I said I would ask you." He was loosening his cravat, his chin
thrown up, the light of the candle falling over his well-knit shoulders
and chest outlined through his white shirt.
"Better not go, Ollie--you've been away so much lately."
"Oh, dearie," he protested, in a tone as a child would have done, "what
does a day or two matter? Be a darling old mother and let me go. Tom
has a gun for me, and Mr. Talbot is going to lend us his red setter.
Tom's sister is going, too, and so are her cousins. Just think, now, I
haven't had a day in the country for a coon's age." His arms were round
her neck now. He seemed happier over the excuse to caress her than
anxious about her possible refusal.
She loosened one of his hands and laid it on her cheek.
"No holidays, son? Why you had two last week, when you all went out to
Stemmer's Run," she said, looking up into his face, his hand still in
hers.
"Yes, but that was fishing!" he laughed as he waved an imaginary rod in
his hands.
"And the week before, when you spent the day at Uncle Tilghman's?" she
continued, smiling sadly at him, but with the light of an ill-concealed
admiration on her face.
"Ah, but mother, I went to see the Lely! That's an education. Oh, that
portrait in pink!" He was serious now, looking straight down into her
eyes--talking with his hands, one thumb in air as if it were a bit of
charcoal and he was outlining the Lely on an equally real canvas. "Such
color, mother--such an exquisite poise of the head and sweep to the
shoulder--" and the thumb described a curve in the air as if following
every turn of Lely's brush.
Her eyes followed his gestures--she loved his enthusiasm, although she
wished it had been about something else.
"And you don't get any education out of the Judge's law-books?"
"No, I wish I did." The joyous look on his face was gone now--his hand
had fallen to his side. "It gets to be more of a muddle every day--"
and then he added, with the illogical reasoning of youth--"all the
lawyers that ever lived couldn't paint a picture like the Lely."
Mrs. Horn closed her eyes. It was on her tongue to tell him she knew
what was in his heart, but she stopped; no, not to-night, she said
firmly to herself, and shut her lips tight--a way she had of bracing
her nerves in such emergencies.
Oliver in turn saw the expression of anxiety that crossed his mother's
face and the thin drawn line of the lips. One word from her and he
would have poured out his heart. Then some shadow that crossed her face
silenced him. "No, not to-night--" he said to himself. "She has been
sitting up for me and is tired--I'll tell her to-morrow."
"Don't go with Tom Pitts, my son," she said, calmly. "I'd rather you'd
stay; I don't want you to go this time. Perhaps a little later--" and a
slight shiver went through her as she rose from her chair and moved
toward him.
He made no protest. Her final word was always law to him--not because
she dominated him, but because his nature was always to be in harmony
with the thing he loved. Because, too, underneath it all was that
quality of tenderness to all women old and young, which forbade him to
cause one of them pain. Almost unconsciously to himself he had gone
through a process by which from having yielded her the obedience of a
child, he now surrendered to her the pleasures of his youth when the
old feeling of maternal dominance still controlled her in her attitude
to him. She did not recognize the difference, and he had but
half-perceived it, but the difference had already transformed him from
a boy into a man, though with unrecognized powers of stability as yet.
In obeying his mother, then at twenty-two, or even in meeting the whims
and conceits of his sweethearts, this quality of tenderness to the
woman was always uppermost in his heart. The surrender of a moment's
pleasure seemed so little to him compared to the expression of pain he
could see cross their faces. He had so much to make him happy--what
mattered it if out of a life so full he should give up any one thing to
please his mother.
Patting him on the cheek and kissing him on the neck, as she had so
often done when some sudden wave of affection overwhelmed her, she bade
him good-night at last.
Once outside in the old-fashioned hall, she stopped for a moment, her
eyes fixed on the floor, the light from the hall-lamp shining on her
silver hair and the shawl about her shoulders, and said slowly to
herself, as if counting each word:
"What--can I do--to save this boy--from--himself?"