Part 4 (1/2)

”It is very nice. I like it very much.”

”But not enough to sit in it,” said Madam Carroll, smiling.

”I really did not notice where I was sitting,” said the girl, getting up; ”I almost always sit in the easy-chair. But won't you take it yourself, mamma?”

”I would rather see you in it,” answered Madam Carroll. ”Besides, it is too deep for me; there is some difference in our lengths.” She seated herself in a low chair, and looked at the long, lithe shape of Sara, opposite, her head thrown back, her slender feet out, her arms extended on the broad arms of the cus.h.i.+oned seat.

Sara, too, looked at herself. ”I am afraid I loll,” she said.

”Be thankful that you can,” answered the smaller lady; ”it is a most refres.h.i.+ng thing to do now and then. Short-backed women cannot loll. And then people say, 'Oh, _she_ never rests! _she_ never leans back and looks comfortable!' when how can she? It is a matter of vertebrae, and we do not make our own, I suppose. You did not stay long at Miss Dalley's.

Didn't you find her agreeable?”

”She might have been--unaccompanied by Ta.s.so.”

Madam Carroll laughed. ”He is her most intimate friend. She has quite taken him to her heart. She has been so anxious to see you, because you were acquainted with him in his own tongue, whereas she has been obliged to content herself with translations. She has a leaf from his favorite tree, and a small piece of cloth from his coat--or was it a toga? But no, of course not; doublet and hose, and those delightful lace ruffles which are such a loss to society. These valuable relics she keeps framed. It is really most interesting.”

”I never cared much for Ta.s.so,” said Sara, indifferently.

”That is because you have had a large variety to choose from, reading as you do all the poets in the original, from Homer down to--to our sad but fascinating Lamartine,” answered Madam Carroll, looking consideringly about the room, and finally staying her glance at the toilet-table, upon which she had expended much time and care. ”But our poor Miss Dalley's life has been harshly narrowed down, narrowed, I may say, to Ta.s.so alone. For all their small property was swept away by the war, and she is now obliged to support herself and her mother by dyeing: there is, fortunately, a good deal of dyeing in Far Edgerley, and so she took it up. You must have noticed her hands. But we always pretend not to notice them, because in all other ways she is so lady-like; when she expects to see any one, she always, and most delicately, wears gloves.”

Madam Carroll related this little village history as though she were but filling an idle moment; but the listener received an impression, none the less, somewhere down in a secondary consciousness, that she had not quite done justice to poor Miss Dalley and her aspirations, and that some time she ought to try to atone for it.

But this secondary consciousness was small: it was small because the first was so wide and deep, and so filled with trouble--trouble composed in equal parts of perplexity, disappointment, and grief. She was at home, and she was not happy. This was a conjunction of conditions which she had not believed could be possible.

She had never had any disagreements with her father's wife, and she had been fond of her in a certain way. But the wife had never been to the daughter more than an adjunct--something added to her father, of qualifying but not independent importance; a little moon, bright, if you pleased, and pretty, but still a satellite revolving round its sun. As a child, she had accepted the new mother upon this basis, because she could make everything ”more pleasant for papa;” and she had gone on accepting her upon the same basis ever since. Madam Carroll knew this.

She had never quarrelled with it. She and her daughter had filled their respective positions in entire amity. But now that this daughter had come home to live, now that she was no longer a school-girl or child, this was what she had discovered: her father, her idol, had turned from her, and his wife had gained what his daughter had lost. There could be no doubt but that he had turned from her; his manner towards her was entirely changed. He seemed no longer to care to have her with him; he seemed to avoid her; he was not interested in anything that was connected with her--he who had formerly been so full of interest; he never kept up a conversation with her, but let it drop as soon as he could; he was so--so strange! Although she had now been at home two weeks, she had scarcely once been alone with him; Madam Carroll had either been present from the beginning, or she had soon come in; Madam Carroll had led the conversation, suggested the topics. The Major had always been fond of his pretty little wife; but he had also been devoted to his daughter. The change in him she could not understand; it made her very unhappy. It would have made her more than that--made her wretched beyond the possibility of concealment--had there not been in it an element of perplexity; perplexity which bewildered her, which she could not solve. For, while her own position and her father's regard for her seemed completely changed, life at the Farms went on day after day upon the distinct a.s.sumption that there was no change, that everything was precisely as it always had been. This a.s.sumption was not only mentioned, but insisted upon, the Major's wife often alluding with amus.e.m.e.nt to what she called their ”dear obstinate old ways.”

”The Major ties his cravat precisely as he did twenty-five years ago--he has acknowledged it to me,” she said, glancing at him merrily. ”We have the same things for dinner; we wear the same clothes, or others made exactly like them; we read the same books because we think them so much better than the new; we discuss the same old topics for the same prejudiced old reason. We remain so obstinately unchanged that even Time himself does not remember who we are. Each year when he comes round he thinks we belong to a younger generation.”

The Major always laughed at these sallies of his wife. ”You forget, my dear, my gray hairs,” he said.

”Gray hairs are a distinction,” answered Madam Carroll, decisively. ”And besides, Major, they're the only sign of age about you; your figure, your bearing, are as they always were.”

And on Sundays, when he carried round the plate at St. John's, and at his wife's receptions once in two weeks, this was true.

Sara came out of her troubled revery at the sound of Madam Carroll's voice. This lady was going on with her subject, as her step-daughter had not spoken.

”Yes, Caroline Dalley is really very intelligent; she is one of the subscribers for our _Sat.u.r.day Review_. You know we subscribe for one copy--about twelve families of our little circle here--and it goes to all in turn, beginning with the Farms. The Major selected it; the Major prefers its tone to that of our American journals as they are at present. Not that he cares for the long articles. With his--his wide experience, you know, the _long_ articles could only be tiresome; they weary him greatly.”

”I must have tired him, then, this morning; I read some of the long articles aloud.”

”You had forgotten; you have been so long absent. It was very natural, I am sure. You will soon recall those little things.”

”How can I recall what I never knew? No, mamma, it is not that; it is the--the change. I am perplexed all the time. I don't know what to do.”

”It isn't so much what to do as what not to do,” replied Madam Carroll, looking now at the lounge she had designed, and surveying it with her head a little on one side, so as to take in its perspective. ”The Major has not yet recovered entirely from his illness of last winter, you know, and his strength cannot be overtaxed. A--a tranquil solitude is the best thing for him most of the time. I often go out of the room myself purposely, leaving him alone, or with Scar, whose childish talk, of course, makes no demand upon his attention; I do this to avoid tiring him.”

”I don't think _you_ ever tire him,” said Sara.