WAS IRENE RIGHT?
Ifshe could have heard some of the talk that had taken place on the porch in the moonlight, Mrs. Burnham would have better understood her son's consideration. They had taken but very few turns on the porch when Erskine said:—
"Mamma has gone upstairs. I think I must run up and see her a few minutes, Irene. She does not seem to feel quite well to-night; although in some respects I think I never saw her looking better; her eyes were very bright, did you notice? Perhaps she is feverish. Did she speak of having cold?"
"Not at all; I have no idea that she doesn't feel quite well."
"There was something peculiar about her. Didn't she really go out at all to-day? That is certainly unusual; you have seen how particularshe is to keep her Friday programme. Irene, I am really afraid that she is ill."
"She isn't ill at all, you fussy boy; I think you are absurd about your mother. You fuss over her as though she were a spoiled child. That is just the word for it."
"Very well," he said good-humouredly. "I must go and 'fuss over' her, enough to know why she overturned her usual programme," and he moved toward the door.
His wife held to his arm and tried to arrest his steps.
"Don't go in, Erskine; it is stuffy inside, and I haven't seen you since morning. As for that programme which worries you so much, if you were not dreadfully stupid to-night you would understand that it is I who overturned it. I ran away with the carriage, I told you—almost as soon as you went yourself. I was so charmed with the idea of seeing the Langhams again that I forgot everything else."
Her husband turned then to look at her, his face expressing surprise.
"Did you take our carriage, dear? I supposed you ordered one from the livery."
His wife pretended to pout.
"You are cross to-night, Erskine. I don't see why I should. I thought 'Our' meant mine as much as hers. Why shouldn't she order one if she wanted it?"
He laughed, as though he was expected to understand that she was talking nonsense, but he spoke with an undertone of decision.
"Oh if it comes to that, the carriage as well as the horses are undoubtedly my mother's, but she and I have never drawn any hard and fast lines about 'mine' and 'thine'; I have always found her too willing to give up her convenience for mine. For that reason, perhaps, I have been careful to plan systematically for her, and to anticipate and overrule her personal sacrifices as much as possible, and I know that you will delight to join me in it. I am afraid that she was much inconvenienced to-day; still, that cannot be why she did not see any of her friends. What reason did she give, dear, for not coming down?"
Irene pouted in earnest this time.
"Really, Erskine, you are strangely obtuse! I have explained at least three times that motherspent the afternoon in her room, and that I gave orders that she should not be disturbed. I thought I should be commended for it instead of blamed."
"I haven't had a thought of blaming you, Irene, but I am a trifle anxious about my mother, and what you say only increases the anxiety. She has never been given to sleeping much in the daytime."
"Oh what nonsense! as though you knew what she did all day, while you are in town! Of course she sleeps; old people always do."
"My mother isn't old, Irene."
"My mother isn't old, Irene."—Page 167.
"My mother isn't old, Irene."—Page 167.
"My mother isn't old, Irene."—Page 167.
"Why not, I wonder? you ridiculous boy! When should people begin to be called old, pray, if not at fifty? And she is more than that. She is within a few years of Auntie's age, and you thought she was an old woman, and were always preaching to me about how patient I must be with her on that account."
Her husband gave her a troubled, half-startled look. His mother nearly as old as the invalid aunt who had seemed to him old enough to be his grandmother!
"Are you sure?" he asked helplessly.
His wife laughed satirically.
"Sure of what, my beloved dunce? That your mother is fifty-three? Of course I am. It was only a few days ago that she showed me her gold-lined silver cup, that has the imprint of her first teeth and is dated for her first birthday."
Then her face sobered.
"And I'll tell you another way in which I know it, Erskine. She is growing nervous and over-sensitive, as old people always do. I can see a great difference in her, even in the short time that I have been here. It is nothing to worry about, of course; simply something to be expected as among the infirmities of age. You ought to have married me six or eight years before you did; it would have been easier for her. She simply cannot get used to your having a wife. 'My son' has 'lived and breathed and had his being' so many years for her sake alone, that to share him with another is a bitter experience. She doesn't love me one bit, Erskine, and it is not my fault. If I were an angel from heaven, it wouldn't make any difference, provided I had presumed to marry you. Itmakes it hard for both of us; and for that very reason it would be much better if you and I were in a little house of our own. She would get used to it much easier if she did not have me continually before her eyes."
If she could have seen distinctly the look of pain on her husband's face, as she got off these sentences with composed voice, it might have moved her to pity for him. When he spoke, his voice was almost sharp. "I am sure you are mistaken, Irene; utterly mistaken. My mother wanted me to marry; she has wanted it for years; at times she was actually troubled because I did not, and spoke of it very seriously."
Irene laughed lightly as she gave his arm some half-reproving, half-caressing pats.
"Blind as a bat, you are!" she said. "Despite all your supposed wisdom. On general principles your mother wanted you to marry, of course, because that is the proper thing for a man to do. But marriage in the abstract and marriage in the concrete are two very different matters. There! haven't I put that well? Those are lawyers' terms, aren't they? They sound learned, anyway."
He smiled in an absent-minded way at her folly. His thoughts were elsewhere. Something in the turn of her sentence had carried him suddenly back to a moon-lighted evening in which he had walked and talked with Alice Warder, and he could seem to hear her voice again as she said:—
"I know your mother loves me, Erskine, almost as she would a daughter; and I also know that she loves me a great deal better because her son is like a brother to me instead of being—something else." He remembered how he had puzzled over it all, and studied his mother's face, and half decided that Alice was right. Was Irene right, also? Was his mother grieved that he had married at all? Was it possible that she could have stooped to so small a feeling as jealousy!
His wife laid her head caressingly against his arm and said softly:—
"Don't worry about it, Erskine. We can't either of us help it now; and we must just make the best of it and do as well as we can."
For the first time in his life, as those low tremulously spoken words sounded in his ears, afeeling very like resentment toward his mother swelled in Erskine Burnham's heart, and a torrent of tenderness rushed over him toward the wife who had no one in all the world but himself. This was what she had often told him.
All things considered it is perhaps not strange that he did not visit his mother's room that evening.
It is true that when they went upstairs he paused before her door and listened, and told himself that she was asleep and he would not disturb her. But there had been nights before, many of them, in which he had waited at her door and listened, and murmured: "Mommie," and received a prompt invitation to enter. On this evening, though the hour was not late, he was not insistent. He made no attempt to knock or to speak. It was his concession to that new thought about her being an old woman. Or was it a slight concession, unawares, to that new feeling of resentment?
His mother, knowing nothing of what had been talked over in the moonlight, held her breath and waited. Of course Erskine would come to say good night. She forgot that shehad wished he would not come! When his footsteps moved toward his own room, she waited a minute, then stepped into the hall.
"Erskine!" she said; but she said it very softly and he did not hear her. She could hear his voice. He was talking with his wife. The mother slipped softly back to her own room and locked her door. It was not late, and she and her son were only across a hall from each other; yet, for the first time in her life under like conditions, if she slept at all it must be without his good-night kiss. There is no true mother but will appreciate the situation. There are, it is true, mothers who are not accustomed to good-night kisses from their grown sons, and so would not miss them, but they are accustomed to a certain atmosphere, and they can understand what it would be like to be suddenly removed from it.
Mrs. Burnham went to her bed as usual, after a while, like the sensible woman that she was. That she did not go to sleep was not her fault, for she made earnest effort to do so. She told herself repeatedly and with a calmness which was itself unnatural, that nothing terrible hadhappened, and that she was above making herself miserable over trifles. Was her daughter-in-law's indifference to her only a trifle? She made a distinct pause over that word "indifference" and selected it with care; of course it was nothing more; and—yes, it was a trifle. How could one who knew her so little and had so little in common with her life be expected to be other than indifferent? Erskine had expected more, very much more, but Erskine was—was different from other people.
Then, suddenly, all her heart went out in a great swell of tenderness for Erskine. She did not stop to reason about it, she did not wait to ask herself why Erskine, who had everything, should be the subject of her shielding care; she simply took him metaphorically once more into her mother-arms and vowed to shield him from even a hint of solicitude on her account. She would rise above it all; she would treat Irene exactly as though she were at all times the loving and considerate daughter that Erskine believed she was; she would let him be blind to her faults, she would even help him to increased blindness. That was her workfor him now; she would accept it and be diligent in it. The thought helped to quiet her, but it did not bring her sleep. She was broad staring awake. She told herself that sleep seemed an impossibility; she wondered curiously how she had ever slept.
A low murmur of talk came to her from the room across the hall. They were not sleeping, either. Could she have heard some of the talk in that room across the hall it would have made things plainer to her than they were.
"There is one thing, dear," Erskine Burnham was saying to his wife, "which we must look upon as settled. We can have no home apart from my mother's. You can plan for summer cottages if you will, and where you will, for a stay of a few weeks, but the real home must always be here. I have taken care of my mother, practically all my life; and now if she is, as you say, growing old, it is not the time to make any change."
"Not even though the change would be a benefit to her?" His wife intended her words to represent a playful sarcasm, but Erskine's face had clouded and he had answered quickly:
"No; not even under such an extraordinary supposition as that. Young as I was when my father died, he said that to me about my mother which has always made her seem to me as a trust; and I must be true to my trust in any case."
After a moment's constrained silence between them his face had cleared and he had laughed cheerfully.
"But we need not be so solemn over it, Irene. I know my mother, and I have no fears as to her wishes. Nothing that anybody could say would make me believe that she could be happier away from me than with me. I would almost not believe it if she said so herself. Quite, indeed. I should feel that she had over-persuaded herself in some spirit of sacrifice. There is material in my mother for martyrdom, Irene. It shall be your and my study to prevent her from indulging in it."
His wife made no attempt to reply. She was in some respects a wise woman and she understood that there was a time when silence was golden. When she spoke again, it was to ask if he did not think curtains lined with rose color would be an improvement on those now separating their dressing room from the main apartment.
THE GENERAL MANAGER
"Mother,don't you think that you are being rather hard on Irene to undertake to hold her to restrictions to which she has never been accustomed, and which to her seem narrow and unreasonable?"
Erskine Burnham had followed his mother to her room evidently with a view to speaking to her alone, his wife having gone on into her own room and closed the door. Even though she had not felt it in the tone of his voice, Mrs. Burnham would have known by her son's opening word that he was annoyed.
He rarely used the word "mother" when addressing her directly. As a rule the habits of his childhood prevailed, and "mamma" was the name in frequent use; or, oftener still perhaps, when they were quite alone, his special pet name for her, "mommie," came naturally to his lips. But of late she had heard, oftener thanever before, what was to him a colder term "Mother," and had learned to know what it meant.
She hesitated a moment before replying, and her hesitation seemed to irritate her son. He spoke quickly, with a note in his voice which she had never found in it before.
"I must confess, mother, that I am surprised and not a little disappointed at the course you are taking. When I brought Irene here, it was not only in the hope but the assured belief that I was bringing her to what she had never really had before—a mother,—and that you would become to her in time, what you have always been to me. I never for a moment dreamed of your standing coldly at one side, not only indifferent to her innocent devices for pleasure, but actually blocking her way! If I could have imagined such a condition of things, I would have better understood her feeling from the very first that we ought to go into a house of our own, where she would not feel herself an interloper."
Mrs. Burnham was ready then with her reply.
"Erskine, I do not think Irene could haveunderstood me. I made no attempt to hold her to any restrictions. She asked a direct question about my own views, which, of course, I answered. But I ought not to have to explain to my son that I do not try to force my opinions upon any one."
He made a movement of impatience.
"That kind of thing is not necessary, mother, between us; but you know very well that there are ways of expressing one's opinions that effectually trammel others of the same household.
"The simple truth is that Irene has played cards, for amusement, in her own and her friends' parlors, ever since she was old enough to play games of any kind; and to her, our ideas concerning cards seem as absurd as though applied to tennis or golf. Personally, I see no reason why she should not continue to amuse herself in her own way. It is true I do not play cards; but she knows, what both you and I understand perfectly, that this is a concession on my part to the extreme views of my mother, who could hardly expect my wife to have exactly the same spirit. I have told Irenethat out of deference to your feelings, I do not want her to entertain her friends with cards, in the parlors, but she certainly ought to be left free to do in her own rooms what she pleases."
At almost any other period in Mrs. Burnham's life, a formal and elaborate expression of her son's views upon any subject, given in a haughty and almost dictatorial tone, such as he was using, would have filled his mother with astonishment and pain. She was almost curiously interested in herself on discovering that she had passed that stage, and was occupying her mind for the moment with quite a different matter.
Why had Irene chosen just this line of attack? What did she hope to accomplish by such a singularly distorted representation of their talk together? It must have been sadly distorted to have moved Erskine to an exhibition of annoyance such as he had never before shown to her. Yet had he been present at the interview, his mother felt confident that it would not have disturbed him.
She went swiftly over the talk, in memory, while Erskine waited, and fingered the booksand magazines on her table with the air of a nervous man who wanted to appear at ease. It had been a brief conversation, not significant at least to an observer, in any way. Irene had been looking over the mail, and had exclaimed at an invitation.
"The Wheelers are giving another card party; what indefatigable entertainers they are! it isn't a month since their last one. This time it is a very select few, in Mrs. Harry Wheeler's rooms. That is what Erskine and I must do, since you won't allow cards in the parlors. Have you really such queer notions, mother, as Erskine pretends?"
Mrs. Burnham remembered just how carefully she had watched her words, in reply.
"I don't play cards, Irene, if that is what you mean."
"Oh, I mean a great deal more than that. Erskine says you won't allow such wicked things in your part of the house. Is that so?"
"We have never had them in the house since Judge Burnham changed his views with regard to them."
"Oh, did he change? how curious, for alawyer, too! I don't believe Erskine will get notional as he grows older. He isn't one of that kind." Whereupon the older woman had turned resolutely away, resolved to speak no more words on the subject unless they were spoken in Erskine's presence. It was this conversation, reported, that had brought her son to her in his new and lofty mood of guardian of his wife's liberties! Just as he tossed down the magazine with which he had been playing, with the air of one who meant to wait no longer, his mother spoke with gentle dignity.
"Erskine, of course your rooms are your own, to do with as you will. I made no restrictions and hinted at none. On my desk under the paper-weight is the quotation you wished looked up, and also the statistics about which you asked." Then she turned and passed out, to the hall.
All this was on a midsummer morning nearly three months removed from that moonlighted evening on which this mother had renewed her solemn pledge to be to her son and her son's wife all that they would let her be. In the face of steady resistance she had been fairly true to the pledge. It had now become quite plain toher that it was not chance, nor mere heedlessness, that was working against her, but that Mrs. Erskine Burnham meant to resist her, meant to look upon her as a force in her way, to be got rid of if possible; if not by persuading her son to leave her, then, perhaps by making her so uncomfortable that she would leave him. The plan was not succeeding. Ruth Erskine Burnham had lived through too many trying experiences before this time to be easily routed. She was in the home to which her husband had brought her as a bride, and she meant that nothing but a stern sense of duty should ever separate her from it.
Yet Mrs. Erskine Burnham, if she had but known it, had accomplished much. The mother no longer turned with a sickening pain from the thought of Erskine having other home than hers. There were times when she could almost have joined his wife in pleading for that "cunning little cottage." There were days wherein she told herself breathlessly and very secretly, that for Erskine to come home to her for a single half-hour,alone, would compensate for days of absence.
But if she had changed her point of view, so had Irene. His wife talked to him no more of a home by themselves. She was growing fond of the many-roomed, rambling old house whose utter abandonment to luxurious comfort was the talk and the pride of the neighborhood; and was the result of years of careful study on the part of a cultured woman accustomed to luxuries.
The new Mrs. Burnham developed an interest in the carefully-trained servants who had been a part of the establishment for so many years that they said "our" and "ours" in speaking of its belongings. She came to realize, at least in a measure, that servants like these were hard to secure, and harder to keep. She began also to like the comfort of proprietorship, without the accompanying sense of responsibility. The machinery of this house could move on steadily without break or jar, and without an hour of care or thought bestowed by her; yet her slightest order was obeyed promptly and skilfully.
Her orders were growing more and more frequent, and it was becoming increasingly apparent to those who had eyes to see that "youngMrs. Burnham," as some of them called her, was assuming the reins and being recognized as the head of the house.
Ellen, the maid who had been with Mrs. Burnham since Erskine's boyhood, and who was a rebel against other authority than hers, had openly rebelled, one day, and with blazing eyes that yet softened when the tears came, assured Ruth that she could not have two mistresses, especially when the one who wasn't mistress at all took pains to contradict the orders of the other; and if she had got to be ordered about all the time by Mrs. Erskine, the sooner she went, the better.
"Very well, Ellen," Mrs. Burnham had said, holding her tones to cold dignity. "I shall be sorry to part with you, but it is quite certain that so long as you remain in the house you must obey Mrs. Erskine Burnham's slightest wish. If you cannot do this, of course we must separate."
So Ellen went. In a perfect storm of tears and sobs and regrets, it is true; but she went. This arrangement pleased just one person. Erskine openly complained that her successorwas not and never would be a circumstance to Ellen, and made his mother confess that she missed Ellen sorely, and asked her why, after being faithfully served for twenty years, she could not have borne with a few peculiarities. His mother was thankful that he did not insist upon knowing just what form her peculiarities took, and his wife's eyes sparkled. She had recognized Ellen from the first as an enemy, and had meant to be rid of her.
In short, Mrs. Erskine Burnham had settled down. She told her special friends with a cheerful sigh that she had sacrificed herself to her husband's mother, who was growing old and ought not to be burdened with the care of a house. So, much as they would have enjoyed a home to themselves, they had determined to stay where they were.
So steady and skilful were this General's movements toward supremacy that Ruth herself scarcely realized the fact that when she gave an order in these days, she did it hesitatingly, often adding as an afterthought:—
"Let that be the arrangement, unless Mrs. Erskine Burnham has other plans; if she has,remember, I am not at all particular." And she was never surprised any more by the discovery that there was a totally different arrangement. It was therefore in exceeding bad taste for Erskine Burnham to present himself to his mother in lofty mood and threaten her with a separate home for himself and wife. One of his mother's chief concerns at this time was to shield him from the knowledge that she sometimes prayed for solitude as the safest way out of the thickening clouds. That he did not realize any of this can only be attributed to the condition of which his wife often accused him; namely, that he was "as blind as a bat."
The proposed card-party at the Wheelers' came off in due time, both Irene and Erskine being among the guests. Within the month, Irene gave what the next morning's social column called "an exclusive and charming affair" of the same kind in her own rooms. It is true that she had schemed for a different result from this. She had meant to give a card party on a larger scale. Her careful rendering to her husband of the talk about restrictions had been intended to call from him the declaration that theparlors were as much theirs as his mother's, and that if she chose to play cards in them, no one should disturb her. She miscalculated. Instead of this, his deliverance was more emphatic than ever before.
"Remember, Irene, that my mother's sense of the fitness of things must never be infringed upon in any way that can disturb her. Our rooms are our castle and we will do with them as we choose; but no cards downstairs, remember, or anything else that will disturb her—"
"Prejudices!" his wife had interrupted in a manner that she had intended should be playful; but he had spoken quickly and with dignity.
"Very well, prejudices if you will. I was going to say traditions; but if you prefer the other word, it doesn't matter. Whatever they are, they are to be respected."
So Irene, having learned some time before this that such deliverances on the part of her husband were to be respected, took care to keep within the limits of their own rooms. But she took a little private revenge upon her mother-in-law, given in that especially trying would-be playful tone of hers.
"I am sorry that your prejudices—oh, no, pardon me, I mean your traditions—will not allow you to meet our guests this evening; but I suppose that would be wicked, too? Pray how is your absence to be accounted for? Must I trump up an attack of mumps, or dumps, or what?"
As for Erskine, he remained happily unconscious of all these small stings. He was much engrossed in business cares, and left home early and returned late, so that in reality he knew little of what took place during his absence. That all was not quite as he had hoped between his wife and his mother he could not help seeing, but he told himself that he must not be unreasonable; that two people as differently reared as they had been must have time to assimilate; probably they were doing very well, and it was he who was struggling for the impossible. So he straightway put aside and forgot the words of dignified reproach that he had addressed to his mother, and she became "mommie" again, and always his second kiss of greeting was for her. And the mother during these days thanked God that she was able to hide her disappointment and her pain, and meet him always with a smile.
LOOKING BACKWARD
Mrs.Burnham came into the room with the air of one in doubt as to whom she was to meet. Probably it was some one whom she ought to recognize; and if she did not, it would be embarrassing.
"She would not give any name, ma'am," the maid had said. "She says she is an old acquaintance, and she wants to see if you will know her."
But Ruth did not know her. She had a fairly good memory for faces, yet as she advanced she told herself that this woman was mistaken in the person. There must be some other Mrs. Burnham whom she had known. But the lady who arose to meet her was apparently not disappointed, and was at her ease and eager.
"I hope you will forgive this intrusion, dear Mrs. Burnham. I could not resist the temptation to see if you had a lingering remembranceof the silly girl to whom you were once very good. It was foolish in me to fancy such a thing. I was just at the age to change much in a few years."
Mrs. Burnham was studying the fair and singularly reposeful face; taking in unconsciously at the same time the grace of the whole perfect picture, hair and eyes and dress and form, all in exquisite harmony.
"A perfect lady!" she told herself. "How rarely the phrase fits, and how exactly it applies here. Yet where before have I seen that face?" She was back in the old college town, away back, among the early years. What had suddenly taken her there? She was—this was not!—
"You are surely not," she began, and hesitated.
The fair face broke into rippling smiles.
"Yes," she said, "I am. Do you really remember Mamie Parker just a little bit?"
"I remember her, perfectly, but—"
"But I am changed? Yes, fifteen years make changes in young people. I was not much over eighteen then, and very young for my years.But you have not changed, Mrs. Burnham; I should have known you anywhere. Perhaps that is partly because I have carried you around in my heart all these years. It must be beautiful to be able to do for girls all that you did for me. If I could do it, if I could be to one young girl what you became to me, I should know that I had not lived in vain."
Mrs. Burnham was almost embarrassed. What did the woman mean!
"My dear friend, I do not understand," she said. "There must be some strange mistake. Have you not confused me with some other friend? What could I possibly have done for you in the few, the very few times that we met?"
Her caller laughed a low, sweet laugh, and as she spoke made an inimitable gesture with her hands that emphasized her words.
"You did everything for me," she said. "Everything! You gave me ideals, you refashioned my entire view of life; you were the means God used to breathe into me the spirit of real living. May I claim a little of your time to-day, and tell you just a little bit of the story, for a purpose? I had only this one day here,and I felt compelled to intrude without permission."
Mrs. Burnham heard her almost as one in a dream. She was struggling with her memories; trying to find in this fair vision, with her refined voice and dress, and cultured language and perfect manner, a trace of the singularly ill-bred, loud-voiced, outspoken Mamie Parker. How had such a transformation been possible?
"You have but one day here?" she said, remembering her duties as hostess. "What does that mean, please? Are you staying in the neighborhood, and will you not come to us for a visit?"
"Thank you, I cannot. I am about to leave the country, and am paying a very brief farewell visit to my friends the Carletons, who are at their summer home in Carleton Park. I have broken away to-day from the numerous engagements they have made for me, and run over here alone, in the hope of securing an interview with you; I have been planning for this a long time. Dear Mrs. Burnham, may I claim the privilege of an old acquaintance and ask to see you quite alone where there will be no danger of interruption? I want to talk fastand put a good deal into a small space, because my own time is so limited, and I do not want to take more of yours than is necessary. I have a purpose which I think, and I hope you will think, justifies my intrusion."
Still as one under a spell, Mrs. Burnham led the way to her private sitting room and established her guest in an easy-chair, from which she looked about her eagerly.
"This is charming!" she said. "I remember your other room perfectly, Mrs. Burnham, and I think I should have recognized this as yours without being told. Rooms have a great deal of individuality, don't you think? Do you remember that parlor in the house where my dear brother Jim boarded? No, of course you don't, but I do, and I thought it very elegant until I was admitted to yours. May I tell you very briefly just a little of what you have been to me? That winter when I met you and your son—it was my first flight from home. I was young, you remember, and unformed in every way; I was, in fact, a young simpleton, with as little knowledge of the world as a girl reared as I had been would be likely to have. Up to thattime I had cared very little for study of any kind. My opportunities were limited enough, but I had made very poor use even of them. My chief idea of a successful life was to marry young, some one who had plenty of money and who would be good to me and let me have a good time. I was what is called a popular girl in the little country village where I lived, and was much sought after because I was what they called 'lively' and could 'make things go.' When my brother invited me to visit him, I went in a flutter of anticipation. I had grown rather tired of the country boys by whom I was surrounded, and I believed that the fateful hour of my life had at last arrived."
She stopped to laugh at her folly; then said, apologetically, "I am giving you the whole crude story, but it is for a purpose. I can laugh at that silly girl, now, but there have been times in my life when I cried over her. She knew so little in any direction, and there were such possibilities of danger, such imminent fear of a wrecked life. She needed a friend, as every girl does; and I can never cease to be thankful that she found one.
"Mrs. Burnham, I presume you have never understood what you did for me by calling on me and inviting me to your home, and opening to me a new world. We were very plain people with limited opportunities in every way, and my father's sudden financial success but a short time before had almost turned our heads; mine, at least, so that I was ready to be injured in many ways. Do you remember me sufficiently to realize the possibilities?"
"I remember you perfectly, my dear," said her puzzled and charmed hostess. "But I do not understand in the least why you think, or how you can think, that I—"
Miss Parker interrupted her eagerly.
"Mrs. Burnham, you were a revelation to me. I had never before come into close contact with a perfect lady. At first, I was afraid of you, which was a new feeling to me, and in itself good for me; and then, for a while, I hated you; I thought that you came between me and some of my ambitions, I called them; now I know that they were utter follies." There was a heightened color on the fair face, and for a moment her eyes drooped.Then she laughed softly at her girlish follies.
"I recovered from them," she said briskly, "and enshrined you in my heart; made you my idol, and, better than that, my ideal. I had discovered from you what woman was meant to be.
"And, dear friend, I learned another lesson also, deeper and more far-reaching than any other. Up to that time I had always thought of religion as a very serious but somewhat tiresome experience that came to the old, or the sick, after they had got all they could out of life. It was Mr. Erskine Burnham who first showed me my utter misunderstanding of the whole matter. I do not know that he understood at the time what he was doing for me, but he gave me a hint of what Jesus Christ was, not only to you, but to himself, a young man in the first flush of youthful successes. I could not understand it at first, and it half vexed me by its strangeness; but there came a time in my life, afterward, when I was disappointed in all my plans, and unhappy. Then I thought of what had been said to me about Christ, and, almostas an experiment, I tried it. Mrs. Burnham, He stooped even to that low plane and revealed Himself to me, and I have counted it all joy to love and serve Him ever since And for this, too, I have to thank you and yours."
"My dear," said Mrs. Burnham, the tears shining in her eyes, "thank you; thank you very much; it is beautiful, although I do not understand it in the least—my part of it; I did nothing,nothing! I thought of it afterward with deep regret; what I might have said, and did not."
"You did better than that," said Miss Parker, gently. "Youlived. But now, believe me, I did not intrude upon your leisure merely to talk about myself. I wanted you to understand the possibility of saving a girl's life to her, because—"
She broke off suddenly to introduce what seemed an entirely irrelevant topic.
"Mrs. Burnham, I saw your daughter down town to-day, for a moment. I did not know her, and should not have imagined it was she, if I had not been told. She has changed very much since I saw her last."
"Were you acquainted with my daughter, Miss Parker? Is it Miss Parker, now? I am taking a great deal for granted."
"Oh, yes; I am still 'Miss Parker'; and expect so to remain. No, I cannot be said to have been acquainted with your daughter, though I knew of her; knew a great deal about her, in fact, when she was a young girl. They were the one great family in our little town, Mrs. Burnham—her uncle's family, with whom she lived; they had a fine old place, three miles from the station, and your daughter used to drive to and from the train in what seemed to me then like royal state. I watched her on all possible occasions and admired and envied her always, though I do not suppose she ever heard of me in her life. She was not so very much older than I, only three years, but I remember I was still counted as a little girl when her sudden marriage took us all by surprise and overwhelmed me with jealous envy."
"Pardon me," said Mrs. Burnham, sitting erect and looking not only perplexed but troubled. "I am somewhat dazed by this sudden return to the long ago, and I must be gettingthings mixed. I thought until a moment ago that you were speaking of my son's wife."
"So I am, Mrs. Burnham. She was Irene Carpenter when I was at the envious stage; and she became Irene Somerville in the autumn that I was fourteen. I shall never forget the vision I had of her on her wedding day. It was at the station and the train was late, so I had ample opportunity to admire and make note of and sigh over the glories of her bridal travelling outfit. Although I was only fourteen and accounted a little girl by others, I by no means considered myself such; and the wild and foolish visions I had already indulged with regard to my own splendid future, make me blush even now to recall. Girls are so foolish, Mrs. Burnham, and so easily led! If there were only always some wise, sweet one at hand to lead them safely!"
Mrs. Burnham arose suddenly and closed both of the doors opening into the hall. She knew that her son was in town, and that his wife had gone by appointment to meet him there; but it seemed to her that such extraordinary talk as this must be closed away from the hall throughwhich they must presently pass. What could this woman mean? She but fourteen when Irene was married? Yet she was at least eighteen when she visited her brother in the college town, and that was nearly fifteen years ago! Irene a married woman seventeen or eighteen years ago! She could see a line in that fateful foreign letter from her son as distinctly as though she were reading it from the page, 'although she is so young, barely twenty-six, she has,' etc. Of course there was some absurd mistake. Irene could not have been more than eight or nine years old at that time when some one whom Mamie Parker fancied was the same person, was married.
"How old do you think my son's wife is?" she asked suddenly. A few statistics, such as she could furnish, would help to clear up this absurd blunder.
"Oh, I know exactly. I have a vivid recollection of the wonderful doings there were in honor of her sixteenth birthday. It happens that our birthdays fall on the very same month and day, the eleventh of November; so that on the day she was sixteen, I was thirteen. Iremember how sorely I took to heart the contrast between the two celebrations. It was before my father had made his successes, and we were much straitened at the time."
Mrs. Burnham's pulses were athrob with her effort at self-control. It was true that Irene's birthday fell on the eleventh of November. It had been celebrated with much circumstance that very season; but instead of its being her twenty-seventh, Miss Parker's story would make it her thirty-seventh! That was absurd! And yet—how often had the thought occurred to her that Irene looked much older than her years! Her maiden name, too, was Carpenter, and her married name had been Somerville. Still, there must have been a cousin, or some near relative of the same name. It was an insult to the family to suppose for a moment that Irene could deceive her husband as to her exact age!
And then, Miss Parker made a remark before which all else that she had said sank into insignificance.
"Mrs. Erskine Burnham as I saw her to-day, seemed to me a very beautiful woman, thoughshe does not look in the least as she did when a girl. But her daughter does. At seventeen, Maybelle is really the image of what her mother was at that age. I wish so much that you could see her just now, in all her girlish beauty."
FOR MAYBELLE'S SAKE
Mrs.Burnham stared at her guest with a look that was not simply bewildered, it was frightened. Whatcouldthe woman mean!
"Who is Maybelle?" she spoke the words almost fiercely; but her bewildered guest kept her voice low and gentle.
"I must ask you to forgive me, dear Mrs. Burnham. I know that my words must seem very intrusive, perhaps unpardonable; but indeed I thought I was doing right, and it is for Maybelle's sake alone that I have ventured."
The repetition of that name seemed to irritate Mrs. Burnham. "Will you tell me who she is?" she asked imperiously.
"My friend, is it possible that you do not understand? or do you mean that it is your pleasure to ignore her? Of course you know that there was a child, a little daughter?"
"Whose daughter?"
"The daughter of the lady who afterward became your son's wife." Mamie Parker was growing indignant. However painful the subject might be to Erskine Burnham's mother, certainly the child was not to blame; nor could she, who was apparently the child's only friend, be quite beyond the line of toleration because she had ventured to try to awaken sympathy for her in the heart of a woman who certainly had reason to be interested in her story. Whatever had taken place to hurt them, surely the child ought not to suffer for it.
Mrs. Burnham struggled for composure. Even at that moment the thought uppermost in her mind was that she must shield her son; yes, and her son's wife, if possible. Something terrible had happened somewhere. A confusion of persons, probably, or—she could not think clearly, but there was something, some story, which she must ferret out to its foundation, and must at the same time hide from her son, unless—she would not complete that thought.
"You will forgive me I am sure for not being able to quite follow you." Her voice though cold and constrained was again self-controlled, and she even forced a smile.
"I think I must be unusually stupid this afternoon. There is some misunderstanding that I do not yet quite grasp. This—child? is she?—of whom you are speaking, she is not,—not alone in the world? Why does she especially need a friend?"
Miss Parker's bewildered look returned; they were not getting on. She hesitated a moment, then said firmly:—
"Her father is still living, Mrs. Burnham, but he is seriously ill, and she will soon be quite alone. At the best, the father, as you probably know, is not the kind of friend that one would choose for a young girl, though he has tried to be good to her, in his way."
Mrs. Burnham suddenly leaned forward and grasped the arm of her caller, and spoke with more vehemence than before, though this time her voice was low.
"What do you mean?" she said. "Isn't it possible for you to speak plainly? How shouldI know what you are talking about? Her 'father'! Whose father? Who is she? What is she? And what are either of them to me? I do not understand in the least."
"Mrs. Burnham," said Mamie Parker, sitting erect, with a bright spot of color burning on either cheek, "do you mean me to understand that you are ignorant of the fact that your son married a woman who was divorced from her first husband in less than three years after her marriage, and left with him a little child not six months old, who is now a young woman?"
It was well for Ruth Burnham that she could do just what she did at that moment, although it was for her an unprecedented thing. Every vestige of self-control gave way; she covered her face with her hands and broke into a perfect passion of weeping. Not the slow quiet weeping natural to a woman of her years, but a tempestuous outburst that shook her whole frame with its force.
The distressed witness of this misery sat for a moment irresolute, then she came softly to Mrs. Burnham's side and touched the bowed head with a gentle, caressing movement suchas one might give to a little child, and spoke low and tenderly.
"Dear friend, forgive me; I am so sorry! I did not for a moment imagine that I was telling you anything that you did not already know. I felt my rudeness in coming to you with matters about which I was supposed to know nothing, but I thought you had, perhaps, been misinformed, and that if you could once understand, poor Maybelle would—"
Then she stopped. There seemed nothing that she could say, while that bowed form was shaken with emotion.
It passed in a few minutes. The woman who was accustomed to exercising self-control could not long be under the dominion of her emotions. She raised her head and spoke quietly.
"I hope you can forgive me for making your errand so hard. My nerves do not often play me false in this way. You did right to come to me. Now, may I ask you to begin at the beginning and tell me all that you know about this matter? You are correct in your inference; there are some things that I have not understood."
It was rather a long story. Miss Parker, feeling herself dismissed from the place of comforter, went back to her chair and tried to obey directions and begin at the beginning; held closely to her work by keen incisive questions.
Yes, she had known Mr. Somerville before he married Irene Carpenter; or rather, she had known of him, as girls in country villages always knew about any people who came their way. He was an Englishman of good family, a younger son she had heard, though just what significance attached to that, she had not understood at the time. He had the name among the young people of being wild. They had heard that Irene's uncle disapproved of the match, and threatened to lock her up if she tried to have anything more to do with him. She, Mamie, knowing something of Irene's temperament, had always thought that this was what precipitated matters. She knew that Irene was married during her uncle's absence from home, and that there were some exciting scenes after his return.
The newly married couple went abroad very soon, but they stayed only a short time, andrumor had it that they quarrelled with Mr. Somerville's family and were not invited to stay longer. After that, they lived in New York in good style for a few months, and Mrs. Somerville went into society and was said to be very gay. Yes, she had heard a number of things about that winter, but the stories were contradictory and not reliable. Oh, yes, some of the stories were ugly, but gossip was always that; she could not go into details about that period; there was nothing reliable, and nothing that she cared to talk of. It was when the child was about six months old that her father and mother quarrelled and separated. Oh, yes, there was a divorce; she had made an effort to discover the truth about that, for the little girl's sake, and was sure of it. The mother went abroad with some friends and remained there for several years.
She had heard that she served as nursery governess in an American family who were living in Berlin, for the purpose of educating their sons. She knew that this was so, because she had met one of the sons, later, and he had told her about her; she went by the name ofCarpenter—Miss Carpenter. After leaving that family, Miss Parker did not know what she had done; knew nothing of her for several years. Then she came back to the old homestead and lived there for some time with a maiden aunt who was all that was left of the family, and was an invalid. She had heard that Irene was not contented there, and knew that after a time she and the invalid aunt went abroad. It was while they were living in Paris that Mr. Erskine Burnham met them. Miss Parker had heard of his marriage almost immediately, because she had friends in Paris at the time who had met both Miss Carpenter and Mr. Burnham. Indeed all these items had come to her from time to time by a series of accidents or happenings. She had admired Irene Carpenter at a distance as a girl, and that had made it seem natural to inquire after her, as opportunity offered.
Oh, yes, she had known more or less of Mr. Somerville during all these years. He had remained in New York much of the time; though he had twice crossed the ocean, and once had gone to the Pacific coast, always taking Maybelle with him.
Her first meeting with him in New York had been at the studio of an artist friend for whom he was doing some work. She had seen the child first, a beautiful little girl who had charmed her; then he had come in and she had been shocked on recognizing him, to think that she must have been playing with Irene's little girl. He was an amateur artist, never working steadily enough to make a success for himself, but doing very good work, and earning his living in that way. Oh, yes, and in music also, it was much the same story. He was in frail health, was unsteady, and could not be depended upon; but could play divinely when he chose, and on occasion earned money in that way, playing the violin, or piano, or organ. He always took the child with him and seemed devoted to her, never speaking other than gently to her; and he seemed to try to train her wisely. It was pathetic to see him making an effort to fill the place of both father and mother. Oh, yes, she saw a great deal of him, or rather, of the child, in whom she had been singularly interested from the first, of course.
Her father had moved his family to New Yorkabout that time, and she was in school as a real student for the first time in her life. But she gave most of her leisure to the little Maybelle. Her mother became very fond of the child, and after a while they kept her with them much of the time, to the great comfort of the father, who owned that he often had to go to places where he did not like to take the baby.
Yes, she came to know the father quite well. Maybelle had been allowed always to suppose that her mother was dead. She never questioned, having taken that for granted. Her father, however, during one of his ill turns when he thought he was going to die, had revealed to her mother and herself the sorrowful story of his life, and had shown them Irene's picture. Miss Parker believed that he had a faint hope that when he was gone, the mother would see that their child was cared for.
Yes, he had told her only the truth. She had taken pains to corroborate that part of the story which she had not known before; had gone herself to see the woman with whom they had been boarding when his wife left him. The woman said that Mr. Somerville had come homeintoxicated the night before; "not bad," the poor creature said, "only silly," but the next morning he and his wife had quarrelled, and she went away and never came back.
Being closely cross-questioned Miss Parker added, that the woman had further given it as her opinion that Mrs. Somerville meant all along to be "that shabby," and was only waiting for a good excuse; that she didn't care a "toss up" for her husband, nor the baby neither, though he "just doted" on both of them.
Yes, Miss Parker had talked with him more than once about his sad, wrecked life. She considered him a weak man rather than an intentionally wicked one. He had never spoken ill of his wife. He said frankly that their marriage was a mistake, and that it was his fault. Irene was too young to be married to any one, but he was fascinated with her, and determined to win her at any cost. The truth was, he said, he cheated her. She was tired of her humdrum life in that dull village where her people spent much of their time; she longed to get away, to travel; above all she wanted to go abroad. She had inferred that, because he wasfrom across the water, and belonged to an old family and could show her pictures of a fine old estate that had been in the family for generations, he was therefore wealthy; and he had let her think so. It was the discovery that she had been deceived in this respect, he said, that made her begin to really dislike him, he thought, instead of being simply indifferent to him, as she had been at first. He made no pretence of believing that she had ever loved him.
No, he could not say that she had ever seemed to love the child. At first she had been angry about it, looking at it merely in the light of a hindrance to the few pleasures she could have, cooped up in a boarding-house; and the strongest feeling she had ever shown for the helpless little creature was toleration.
When they quarrelled, and she threatened to leave him, he had told her that she could not take the baby, and she had replied that it was the last thing she wanted to do. But he had not believed her; he had not thought such a state of mind possible. The little thing, he said, had so wound itself about his heart that the thought of living without her was torture;and he had believed that the mother felt the same, but did not choose to own it. He had taken the baby to a friend of his for the day, and felt secure all day in the thought that Irene would be drawn homeward from wherever she went that morning, by the memory of the clinging arms and smiling baby face. But she had never come back.
At this point Ruth Erskine Burnham lost her studied self-control and said the only unguarded word that she had spoken since the interview began.
"That is monstrous! I cannot credit it. The woman who would do such a thing as that would be a fiend!"
"Oh, no!" said Miss Parker, startled at the feeling she had roused, and remembering that they were speaking of this woman's son's wife. "He did not feel it so, the father. He made excuses for her. Even while he was telling me the story, he stopped to say simply:—
"'You see I didn't stop to consider that she disliked and despised me, by this time, and that the baby was my child; that made all the difference in the world;' and of course it would, Mrs. Burnham."
BUILT ON THE SAND
"Yourmother has had a very special guest of some sort and was closeted with her all the afternoon; I suppose she is tired out; she looked so when I met her in the hall."
This was Mrs. Erskine Burnham's explanation to her husband of his mother's absence from the dinner table. They had waited for her a few minutes, then sent a maid to her room, who had reported that Mrs. Burnham was tired and did not care for dinner.
Erskine, on hearing it, had made a movement to rise, a troubled look on his face, and then had waited for his wife's word.
"A guest in her own room? That is unusual for mother, isn't it? Who was it?"
"How should I know? I wasn't enlightened. When I reached home soon after luncheon, I asked Nannie who had been here, and amongothers she mentioned a young lady who had asked very particularly to see 'Madame Burnham,' and said that after a while she took the lady to her own sitting room, and she was there yet. She left but a few minutes before you came, a very stylish-looking person, indeed, and quite young. It is fortunate that she did not stay for dinner, as I supposed she would, having spent the day, or I might have been seized with a fit of jealousy."
"Did you say my mother looked worn? Were you in her room?"
"No, indeed! I did not presume; I all but ran against her in the hall, and thought she looked older than usual."
"She may have had some unpleasant news; I think I will run up and see her."
"Don't, Erskine! I am sure you annoy your mother by such watchfulness. Old people don't like that sort of care, it seems to them like spying upon their movements; they want a chance to do as they please. I found that out from auntie; she seemed really annoyed when I questioned her about her movements. She wanted to be left to come to her dinner, or stayaway, as she pleased; and your mother is just like her."
Erskine opened his lips to speak, then closed them again. He was on the verge of saying that he could not think of two people more unlike than his mother and her aunt; then it occurred to him that to make a remark so manifestly in favor of his own relative would hardly be courteous. Of course Irene thought of her aunt much as he did of his mother, and besides, the aunt was gone.
But he did not go up to his mother. It is true that he told his wife, presently, that he could not think for a moment that his care of and solicitude for his mother would ever look to her like espionage; they understood each other too well for that; but he spoke in a troubled tone. Despite this perfect understanding, his wife's constancy to the belief that his mother was growing old, and more or less feeble, and whimsical, as she believed old people always did, was having its effect upon him; he was beginning to feel at times that perhaps he did not understand his mother, after all.
It was well for his peace of mind that he didnot go to her just then; for the first time in his life he would have been refused admittance to his mother's room. Ruth Erskine Burnham had shut herself away as much as she could from her outside world, and was fighting the battle of her life. A wild temptation was upon her, so strong that in its first strength she could not have resisted it, had she tried, and she did not try. It was so transformed that it did not appear to her as a temptation, but as a duty. Erskine's wife had deceived him; not once, in a crucial moment, but steadily, deliberately, continuously. Not only had she posed for him as a widow, but she had given him vivid pictures of her girlish desolation in her widowhood. His mother knew this, for Erskine had reproduced some of them in a few delicate touches, with the evident object of awakening in her a tender sympathy for one who, though so young, had suffered much.
"Young!" indeed! she had even stooped to the low and petty deception of making herself out to be much younger than she was! could an honorable man condone such small and unnecessary meannesses as that? Especially in hiswife! And Erskine was married to her. Erskine of all men in the world the husband of a divorced woman! And he was on record in the public journals as one who had denounced with no gentle tongue the whole system of legal divorce as permitted in this country; he had characterized it as unrighteous and infamous. Young as he was, he had made himself felt in legal circles along this very line, and was recognized as a strong advocate for better laws and purer living.
So pronounced had he been on this whole subject that certain of his brother lawyers who, in the main, agreed with his views, did not hesitate to tell him that he was too severe, and was trying to accomplish the impossible. His mother, in the light of her recently acquired knowledge, laughed, a cruel laugh, then shivered and turned pale over the memory of a recent conversation which had now grown significant.
The pastor of their church, Mr. Conway's successor, was dining with them, and the talk had turned for a moment on the recent marriage of one of the parties in a famous divorce suit. Erskine had declared that if he were aclergyman, he should consider it his privilege as well as duty to anticipate the law that was surely coming and refuse to perform the marriage ceremony for a divorced person.
"Oh, now, brother Burnham," the clergyman had said, good naturedly, after a brief, keen argument on both sides: "Don't you really draw the lines too closely? You are not reasonable. Do you think he is, Mrs. Burnham?"—the appeal was to Erskine's wife—"You see you have made no allowance for accidents, or misunderstandings of any sort. What would you have a poor woman do who was caught as an acquaintance of mine was, a year or so ago? She married a divorced man without having the remotest idea that he had ever been married before, and did not discover it until six months afterward. Where would those sweeping assertions you have been making place her?"
Erskine had not smiled as he replied:—
"I was not speaking, of course, of people who had been the victims of cruel deception; certainly if I believed in divorce, I should consider that the woman you mention had sufficient cause."
"Because she had been deceived!"
"For just that reason. At least it must be terrible for a woman to spend her life with a man whose word she cannot trust. I should think it would be just ground for separation if anything is."
His mother recalled not only the energy of his tones, but the suddenness with which his wife introduced another topic.
Then there flashed upon her the memory of the clergyman's next remark, addressed to her:—
"Mrs. Burnham, is your daughter always as pale as she is to-day, or has our near approach to a quarrel, just now, frightened her?" Whereupon the color had flamed into Irene's face until her very forehead was flushed; and Erskine, looking at her, had said gayly:—
"My wife always blushes when she is the subject of conversation." What terrible significance attached to all these trifles now!
But, worse than all else, the woman had deserted and disowned her own child! So impossibly preposterous did this seem to Erskine Burnham's mother, that although she had detained her guest until a late hour, andquestioned and cross-questioned, and insisted upon yet more proof, and been shown that there was not a possibility of error, she still shrank from it as something that could not be.
"Can a mother forget her child?" It was the question of inspiration, designed to show the almost impossibility of such a thing; yet inspiration had answered, "Yes, she may!" and here, under their own roof, was a living proof of its truth.
"Howcould she! Howcouldshe!" The mother-nature continually went back to that awful question. Suppose she had not? Suppose she had taken the child away with her, and mothered it all these years, and, at last, Erskine had married her? Then he would have stood in the place of father to that girl, and she would have been taught to call him so! His poor mother shivered as though in an ague chill as the strange, and to her appalling, details of this life-tragedy pressed upon her. A tragedy all the more terrible and bewildering because they had been—some of them—living it unawares.
The possibility that Erskine might haveknowledge of this appalling story did not, even for a moment, occur to his mother. She knew him too well for that. Erskine had been deceived, fearfully deceived! not only in great and terrible ways, as one under awful provocation, but in petty details,—as to her age, for instance; and that this was merely an instance, Ruth knew only too well.
By slow degrees the conviction had been forced upon this truth-loving woman that she had for a daughter one to whom the truth was as a trifle to be trampled upon a dozen times a day if the fancy seized her.
Numberless instances of this had been thrust upon a close observer. "Yes," she would say unhesitatingly and unblushingly to Erskine, when his mother knew that "No" would have been the truth. Even the servants had learned to smile over this peculiarity in their young mistress, and to make efforts to have witnesses for any of her orders that were important. With the outside world she was so unpardonably careless of her word that Mrs. Burnham was almost growing used to apologizing for and blushing over her daughter's society inaccuracies.