For the Major Part 12

"Of course he did not; and I try to be just. He was angry, hurt, alarmed; he was hurt that I should treat him as I did--I treated him horribly--and he was alarmed about you. I have never thanked you for what you did that day, Sara--the day he came to warn us; I could not.

For I knew how you loathed it--the expedient you took. You only took it because there was no other."

"You are very hard to me, mamma."

"About your feeling I am; how can I help it? But not about the deed: that was n.o.ble. In order to help me you let Mr. Owen suppose that you were engaged to a man he--he utterly despised. Well, you helped me. But you hurt him; you hurt Frederick Owen that morning about as deeply as you could." She moved to Sara's side in the darkness, took her hand with a quick grasp and held it in both her own. "And you are so proud," she whispered softly, "that you will never acknowledge that you hurt yourself too; that the sacrifice you then made in lowering yourself by your own act in his eyes was as great a one as a woman can make; for he loves you devotedly, jealously, and you--_you_ know how much you care for him."

Without leaving time for reply, she moved back to her former place, and went on with what she had been saying, as though that sudden soft interpolated whisper had not existed. "Yes--this strange double feeling that I have about Frederick Owen makes me even feel sorry for him at times, sorry to have him suffer as I know he must be suffering, sorry to have him think what I know he must be thinking of you; and also of me.

For he thinks that you had a liking for a man whom he considered unworthy to speak your name (oh, detestable arrogance!); he thinks that it was clandestine, that you dared not tell your father; and that I was protecting you in it as well as I could; all this, of course, he must believe. Death has put an end to it, and now it will never be known; this also he is thinking. But, meanwhile, _he_ knows it. And he cannot forget it. He thinks you have in your heart the same feeling still. But I remembered--I did what I could for you by telling him that it was but a fancy of the moment, that it would pa.s.s."

"Oh!" murmured Sara, with a quick, involuntary gesture of repulsion; then she stopped.

"I was trying to pave a way out of it for you. You do not like the way, because it includes--includes the supposition that you--But one can never please you, Sara Carroll!"

She rose and began to walk swiftly to and fro across the room, her footsteps making no sound on the thick, faded, old-fas.h.i.+oned carpet--a relic from the days of the Sea Island Carrolls.

"What do you want me to do?" she said, abruptly, as she pa.s.sed Sara for the fourth time.

"If you are alluding to Mr. Owen, I don't want you to do anything,"

answered Miss Carroll.

"Oh, you are proud! For the present nothing can be done. But let me tell you one thing--do not be _too_ repellent. 'Tis good in me to warn you, to take his part, when I hate him so--hate him for what he said. Do you suppose I would have had him reading prayers over my poor dead boy after what had pa.s.sed? Never in the world. No one who despised him should come near him. So I had the Baptist minister. I was a Baptist myself when I was a girl--if I ever was a girl! All this hurts _you_, of course; but I cannot help it. Be patient. Some day I shall forgive him. Perhaps soon."

She had paused in front of Sara as she said this, for they had both been guardedly careful to speak in the lowest tones.

The girl left her place on the sofa; she rose and walked beside her stepmother as she resumed her quick, restless journey to and fro across the floor. They came and went in silence for many minutes. Then Sara put her arm round Madam Carroll, and drew her towards the sofa again.

"Rest awhile, mamma," she said, placing the cus.h.i.+ons so that she could lie easily; "you do not know how very tired you are." And Madam Carroll for a half-hour yielded.

"We must bear with each other, Sara," she said, as she lay with her eyes closed. "For amid all our other feelings, there is one which we have in common, our love for your father. That is and always must be a tie between you and me."

"Always," answered Sara.

A little after daylight the Major woke. There had been no return of the fever; he had slept in peace while they kept the vigil near him; his illness was over. As he opened his eyes, his wife came to the bedside; she had just risen--or so it seemed, for she wore a rose-colored wrapper, and on her head a little lace cap adorned with rose-colored ribbon. The Major had not seen the cap before; he thought it very pretty.

"Trying to be old, are you, Madam Carroll?" he said; "old and matronly?"

Sara came in not long afterwards; she, too, was freshly dressed in a white wrapper.

"I have brought you your breakfast, papa," she said.

"Isn't it earlier than usual?" asked the Major, turning his dim eyes towards the window. But he could not see the light of the sunrise on the peaks.

"I am afraid, Major, that you are growing indolent," said Madam Carroll, with pretended severity, as she poured out his tea.

"Indolent?" said the Major--"indolent? Indolence is nothing to vanity.

And you and Sara, in your pink and white gowns, are living images of vanity this morning, Madam Carroll."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I AM AFRAID, MAJOR, THAT YOU ARE GROWING INDOLENT."]

CHAPTER VIII.

Autumn at last came over the mountains; she decked them in her most sumptuous colors, and pa.s.sed slowly on towards the south. The winds followed the G.o.ddess, eight of them; they came sounding their long trumpets through the defiles; they held carnival in the high green valleys; they attacked the forests and routed the lighter foliage, but could not do much against the stiff, dark ranks of the firs. They careered over all the peaks; sometimes they joined hands on Chillawa.s.see's head, and whirled round in a great circle, laughing loudly, for half a day; and then the little people who lived on the ground said to each other that it "blew from all round the sky."

They came to Far Edgerley more than once; they blew through Edgerley Street; at night the villagers in their beds heard the long trumpets through the near gorges, and felt their houses shake. But they were accustomed to these autumn visitors; they had a theory, too, that this great sweeping of their peaks and sky was excellent for their mountain air. And upon the subject of their air there was much conceit in Far Edgerley.

When at length the winds had betaken themselves to the lowlands, with the intention of blowing across the levels of Georgia and Florida, and coming round to surprise the northerners at Indian River and St.

Augustine, the quiet winter opened in the mountains they had left behind them. The Major had had no return of his October illness; he came to church on Sundays as usual, and appeared at his wife's receptions. It was noticed, although no one spoke of it, that he did not hold himself quite so erect as formerly, and that perhaps his eyesight was not quite so good; but he still remained to his village the exemplar of all that was n.o.ble and distinguished, and they admired him and talked about him as much as ever. He was their legend, their escutcheon; so long as they had him they felt distinguished themselves.

The winter amus.e.m.e.nts began about Christmastime. They consisted princ.i.p.ally of the Sewing Society and the Musical Afternoons. To these entertainments "the gentlemen" came in the evening--F. Kenneway, Mr.

Phipps, the junior warden, and the rector, when they could get him. A Whist Club had, indeed, been proposed. There was a double motive in this proposal. There were persons in the congregation who considered whist-playing a test of the best churchmans.h.i.+p; these were secretly desirous to see the test applied to the new rector, or rather the new rector applied to it. But the thoughtful Mrs. Greer, having foreseen this very possibility at an early date in the summer, had herself sounded the rector upon the subject, and brought back a negative upon the end of her delicate conversational line. She had asked him if he thought that the sociability engendered by card-tables at small parties could, in his opinion, counterbalance the danger which familiarity with the pasteboard squares might bring to their young men (Phipps and Kenneway); and whether he himself, at moments of leisure, and when he wished to rest from intellectual fatigue, of which, of course, he must have _so_ much, ever whiled away the time with these same gilded symbols, not with others, but by himself.

Owen, who had not for the moment paid that attention to the eloquence of Mrs. Greer which he should have done, did not understand her. He had received an impression of cymbals. This was no surprise to him; he had found Mrs. Greer capable of the widest range of subjects.

"I mean the painted emblems, you know--cards," explained Mrs. Greer; "clubs, diamonds, and spades, Mr. Owen. Nor should we leave out hearts.

I was referring, when I spoke, to solitaire. But there is also whist.

Whist is, in its way, a climate by itself--a climate of geniality."

This was a phrase of Madam Carroll's. Mrs. Greer had collected a large a.s.sortment of phrases from the overflow of the Farms. These she treasured, and dealt out one by one; her conversation was richly adorned with them. She had excellent opportunities for collecting, as Madam Carroll had long been in the habit of telling her any little item which she wished to have put in circulation through the village in a certain guise. She always knew that her exact phrase would be repeated, but not as hers; it would be repeated as if it were original with the lady who spoke it. This was precisely what Madam Carroll intended. To have said herself, for instance, that the new chintz curtains of her drawing-room combined delicacy and durability, and a bower-like brightness, was too apparent; but for Mrs. Greer to say it (in every house on Edgerley Street) was perfectly proper, and accomplished the same result. The whole town remarked upon the delicacy and the durability and the bower-like brightness; and the curtains, which she had made and put up herself at small expense, took their place among the many other peculiarly admirable things possessed by the Farms. Upon the present occasion, however, Mrs. Greer gave Madam Carroll's name to the phrase she had repeated; she thought it would have more influence. "Yes, that is what our dear Madam Carroll used to call it--a climate of geniality,"

she said, looking at the rector with an inquiring smile.

But, ignoring the phrase of the Farms, none the less did Owen bring out his negative; with the gilded symbols he did not amuse himself, either alone or in company.

Armed, therefore, with this knowledge, Mrs. Greer was ready; she met the project of the Whist Club in its bud, and vanquished it with a Literary Society, whose first four meetings she gave herself, with a delicate little hot supper thrown in. The Whist Club could not stand against this, Miss Honoria Ashley, who was its chief supporter, offering only apples and conversation. But a large cold apple on a winter night is not calculated to rouse enthusiasm; while, as to conversation, everybody knew that hot coffee promoted it. So the Literary Society conquered, and the whist test was not, for that season at least, applied to the churchmans.h.i.+p of the rector.

During these winter months Owen kept himself constantly busy. It was thought that he worked too hard. He looked tired; sometimes, young and strong as he was, he looked worn. There was a good deal of motherly anxiety about this; some sisterly, too. Ferdinand Kenneway said that he felt towards him like a brother. But Owen pursued his own course, unmindful of these sympathetic feelings. He came to Madam Carroll's receptions as usual, but did not stay long: he was the last to come and the first to go. He called at the Farms, though not often; and when he went there, he did not go alone.

So the winter pa.s.sed on and departed, and spring came. Then a sorrow fell upon the little mountain town. Early one soft morning in March, when the cinnamon-colored ta.s.sels were out on the trees, and the air was warm and gray, with the smell of rain in it, word came down Edgerley Street, pa.s.sing from house to house, that Carroll Farms had been visited in the night: the Major, their Major, had wakened quiet and content, but like a little child; the powers of his mind had been taken from him.

Every one had loved him, and now there was real mourning. They all said to each other and to themselves that they should never look upon his like again. The poor nation had greatly retrograded since his day; even their state was not what it had been; under these circ.u.mstances it could not be expected that the world should soon produce another Scarborough Carroll. They went over all the history of his life: his generous sharing of his fortune with his half-brother; his silence under the forgetfulness of that half-brother's children; his high position and many friends in the old army; his brilliant record in the later army, their own army, vanquished, but still dear to them, the army of the South; they told again the story of his gallant ride round the enemy's forces in the Valley, of his charge up the hill at Fredericksburg, his last brave defence of the bridge on the way to Appomattox. His wounds were recalled, his shattered arm, the loss of his money, so uncomplainingly borne; they spoke of his beautiful courtesy to every one, and of his unfailing kindness to all the poor. And then, how handsome he was, how n.o.ble in bearing and expression, how polished in manner! such a devoted husband and father, so pure a patriot! Their dear old Major: they could not say enough.

The junior warden kept his room all day; he could not bear to hear it talked about. Then the next morning out he went at an early hour to see everybody he knew, and he told them all how very imprudent Carroll had always been, recklessly so, recklessly. He was up and down Edgerley Street all day, swinging his cane more than usual as he walked, thus giving a light and juvenile air to his arms and shoulders, which was perhaps somewhat contradicted by the uncertain tread of his little old feet. In the afternoon Frederick Owen went to the Farms; for the first time since the preceding October he went alone. Miss Carroll was in the drawing-room when he came in; she was receiving a visit of general inquiry and condolence from the three Miss Rendleshams. They went away after a while, and then, before he had had time to speak--as he stood there realizing that he had not been alone with her since that day, now six months in the past, when she had told him of her engagement to Dupont--he saw through the open door of the drawing-room the small figure of Madam Carroll. She had not come down to see the three Miss Rendleshams. But she did come down to see the rector. She came straight to him, with her quick, light step. "I heard that you were here, and came down. I am anxious to see you, Mr. Owen. Not to-day, but soon. I thought I would come down myself and ask you; I did not want to write a note."

"At any time you will name," answered Owen. He had risen as she entered.

Miss Carroll had seemed to him unchanged, save that her eyes showed that she had been crying; but the Major's wife, he said to himself, with almost awe-struck astonishment--the Major's wife, had he met her elsewhere, he should hardly have known. Her veil of golden hair, no longer curled, was put plainly back, and fastened in a close knot behind; her eyes, the blue eyes he had always thought so pretty, looked tired and sunken and dim, with crows'-feet at their corners; all her lovely bloom was gone, and the whole of her little faded face was a net-work of minute wrinkles. She was still small and slender, and she still had her pretty features; but this was an old woman who was talking to him, and Madam Carroll had been so young.

"It will not be for some days yet, I think," she was saying. "I shall wait until the doctor has made up his mind. He wants more time, though I want none; when he does make it up, it will be as mine is now. But I prefer to wait until he sees clearly; will you ask him from day to day what he thinks, and, when he has decided, then will you come?"

"Yes," replied Owen. "But do you mean that the Major--"

"I mean that the Major is in no immediate danger; that he will continue about the same. He will not grow better, but neither will he grow much worse. He may be brighter at times, but he will not regain his memory; that is gone. But we shall not lose him, Mr. Owen, that is our great happiness. We shall not lose him, Sara and I, as we had at first feared."

Two tears rolled down her cheeks as she spoke. "It is because I am so thankful," she said, wiping them away. Her long lace-bordered sleeves had been turned back, and Owen was struck with the old, withered look of her small wrists and hands.

"I could not have borne it to lose him now," she went on, as if explaining. "You may think that existence such as his will be is no blessing, nothing to be desired for him or for me. But he is not suffering, he is even happy as a child is happy, and he knows me. He would be content himself to wait a little, if he could know how much it was to me, how much to have him with me, so that I can devote myself to him, devote myself entirely."