Part 13 (1/2)
”You have always done that, Madam Carroll,” said Owen, touched by her emotion.
”You will come, then--on whatever day the doctor makes up his mind,” she said, controlling herself, and returning to her subject.
Here Miss Carroll spoke. ”Isn't it better not to make engagements for the present, mamma?” she said, warningly. ”You will overtax your strength.”
”It is overtaxed at this moment far less than it has been for many a long month,” answered Madam Carroll, as it seemed to Owen, strangely.
She pa.s.sed her hand over her forehead, and then, as if putting herself aside in order to consider her companions for a moment, she looked first at Sara, then turned and looked at Owen. ”Do not stay any longer now,”
she said to him, gently, in an advising tone. He obeyed her, and went away.
On the tenth day after this the doctor, whose conclusions, if slowly made, were sure, announced his decision: it tallied exactly with that of Madam Carroll. The Major was in no present danger; his physical health was fairly good; his condition would not change much, and he might linger on in this state for several years. And then the Far Edgerley people, knowing that no more pain would come to him, and that he was tranquil and even happy, that he recognized his wife, and that she gave to him the most beautiful and tender devotion--then these Far Edgerley people were glad and thankful to have him with them still; not wholly gone, though lying unseen in his peaceful room, which faced the west, so that the sunset could s.h.i.+ne every day upon the quiet sunset of his life.
And they thought, some of them, that thanksgiving prayers should be offered for this in the church. And they all prayed for him at home, each family in its own way.
On the afternoon of the day when the doctor had made up his mind, Frederick Owen went to the Farms. Madam Carroll came down to see him; she took him to the library, now unused, and when they had entered, she closed the door. ”Will you sit here beside me?” she said, indicating a sofa opposite the window. Again he was struck by the great--as it seemed to him, the marvellous--change in her. She looked even older than before; her hair was put back in the same plain way; there was the same absence of color, the same tired look in her eyes, the same fine net-work of wrinkles over all her small face; but added to these there was now a settled sadness of expression which he felt would never pa.s.s away. He missed, too, all the changing inflections and gestures, the pretty little manner and att.i.tudes, and even the p.r.o.nunciation, which he had supposed to belong inseparably to her, which he had thought entirely her own. He missed likewise, though unconsciously, the prettiness of the bright little gowns she had always worn; she was dressed now in black, without color or ornament.
She seemed to divine his thoughts. ”The Major can no longer see me,” she said, quietly; ”that is, with any distinctness. It is no longer anything to him--what I wear.”
He had taken the seat she had offered; she sat beside him, with her hands folded, her eyes on the opposite wall. ”I have a story to tell you,” she said. ”But I can make no prefaces; I cannot speak of feelings.
I hope for your interest, Mr. Owen, even for your sympathy; but if I get them it will be accomplished by a narrative of facts alone, and not by any pathos in the words themselves. I got beyond pathos long ago. My name was Marion More. My father was a missionary in the Southwest--the exact localities I need not give. At sixteen I married. My father died within the year; my mother had died long before. My first child was a son, born when I was seventeen; I called him Julian. Later there came to me a daughter, my little Cecilia. When she was still a baby, and Julian was seven, my husband, in a brawl at a town some miles from our house, killed a man who was well known and liked in the neighborhood; they had both fired, and the other man was the better shot, but upon this occasion his ball happened to miss, and my husband's did not. I was sitting at home, sewing; the baby was in the cradle at my feet, and Julian was playing with his little top on the floor. My husband rode rapidly into the yard on his fast black horse, Tom, sprang down, came into the house, and went into the inner room. He soon came back and went out. He called Julian. The child ran into the yard; then hurried back to get the little overcoat I had made for him. 'Where are you going?' I said. 'To ride with papa,' he answered, and, eager as he was to go, he did not forget to come and kiss me good-by. Then he ran out, and I heard them start; I heard Tom's hoofs on the hard road farther and farther away; then all was still. But less than half an hour afterwards there was noise enough; the garden was full of armed men. The whole country-side were out after him. They hunted him for three days. But he knew the woods and swamps better than they did, and they could not find him. They knew that he would in time make for the river, and they kept a watch along sh.o.r.e. He reached it on the fourth day, at a lonely point; he turned Tom loose, took a skiff which he knew was there, and started out with my little boy upon the swollen tide--for the river was high.
They were soon discovered by the watch on sh.o.r.e. Shots were fired at them. But the skiff was out in the centre of the stream, which was very wide just there, and the shots missed. They followed the skiff along sh.o.r.e. They knew what he did not--that the river narrowed below the bend, and that there were rapids there. He reached the bend, and saw that he was lost; the current carried the boat down towards the narrows; and they began to shoot again; one shot struck Julian. Then his father took him in his arms and jumped overboard with him. That, they knew, was death. They saw the dark bodies whirled round and round, and amused themselves by shooting at them once or twice; they saw them sucked under. Then, farther away, they saw them again swept along like logs, inert, dead; on and on; two black dots; out of sight. Then they rode back, that hunting party; and their wives came and told me, as mercifully as they could, that my husband and my little boy were drowned. I could not bury my dead; on the rapid current of the river they were already miles away; in that country no one cared for the dead.
They cared but little for the living. I took my baby and went away; I left that horrible land. I came eastward. I had no money, or very little; my husband had taken what--what he needed for his flight, and there was nothing left. I tried to teach little day schools for children. I gave music lessons. I did my best. But I was not strong; my little girl, too, was very delicate: there was something the matter with her spine. When this life of ours--hers and mine--had lasted ten years (for I am much older than you have supposed), I met Major Carroll. He was so good as to love me; he was so good as to marry me; he took as his own my poor little girl, and gave her all the comforts and luxuries she needed--things I could not give. She died soon afterwards, in spite of all. But in our new home she had had happy days, and when the end came she did not suffer: she went back to G.o.d in sleep. On the 6th of last July I was in the garden here, gathering some roses; it was below the slope of the knoll, out of sight from the house. The gate opened, and a young man came in. He came across to me. He introduced himself as a stranger in Far Edgerley, who had admired our flowers. He spoke several sentences while I stood looking at him. I was frightened; I knew not why. At last, recovering myself, I turned to walk towards the house.
Then it was that he put his hand on my arm, and said: 'Don't you know me, mother? I am Julian, the little boy you thought dead.' He was thirty-one years old, and I had lost him before he was eight. What had startled me was his likeness to his father. They had escaped, after all.
His father had feigned death; he had let himself be swept along, keeping hold of the child, who was unconscious. It was a desperate expedient.
But he was desperate. He was an expert swimmer, and he succeeded, though barely, with life just fluttering within them. They lay hid in a canebrake for some days, and then, after much difficulty, they made their way out of the country. They went to Mexico. Then they went to the West India Islands. They lived in Martinique, and they took the name of Dupont. My husband did not try to come back; a reward had been offered for him before he fled; there was a price on his head. He knew that I supposed him dead, and he was quite willing to be dead--to me. He was tired of me. I was only a burden to him. I was always talking about little things. My son thought that we were dead--his little sister and I; his father had told him so. But after his father's death he found among his papers some memoranda which made him think that perhaps we were not, that perhaps he could even find us. He did not try immediately; it was but a chance, and he was interested in other things.
But later he did try; that is, in his way; he was never sharp and energetic--as you are. He found me; but his little sister had gone to heaven. My son had had only the education of the islands, and he was, besides, a musician. The temperament of musicians is peculiar. You will allow me to say that I think you do not understand it. He wished to go back to the islands; he had been in the United States for a year, and he did not like the life or climate. I helped him as much as I could. It was not much; but he started. Then he had that illness in New York, and came back. It was most important that he should start again, and soon--before the return of winter. I had nothing to give him, and so I went to my daughter--I mean my step-daughter, Sara. She has, you know, a small income of her own, left her by her uncle. You are asking yourself why I did not go to the Major; why there should have been any secret about it from the first. It was because I had not told him at the time of our marriage, or at any time, that I had ever had a son. He thought when he married me that Cecilia was my only child; he thought me twenty-three, when I was in reality over thirty-five. It would have been a great shock and pain to him to know that I had deceived him--a shock which, in his state of health at that time, he could not have borne.
When Sara knew, she helped me; she helped me n.o.bly. But the time for the semi-annual payment of her income was not until the 12th of October, and by the terms of her uncle's will she could not antic.i.p.ate it; we were therefore obliged to wait. Before the 12th of October my son was taken ill, as I had feared. And the rest--you know. The time when I could tell you this has now come. It has come because nothing can again disturb the Major's peace. He is near us in touch, and close to our love, but earth's sorrows and pains can trouble him no more. I can therefore tell you, and I do it for two reasons. One is that it will explain to you the course we took; it will explain to you what Sara said that afternoon, for I think that it has grieved you--what Sara said. It was an expedient that she thought of to divert your attention, to stop further action on your part. We knew--from your having tried to see the Major, and see him alone--that you had learned something; how much, we could not tell.
And when you came again the next day, and spoke as you did, first to me, and then to her, and I was frightened and lost my courage, fearing lest you should speak to others also; then Sara took the only expedient she could think of to silence you, to stop you effectually, and thus secure her father's peace. But it was only an expedient, Mr. Owen. It was never true.” She paused for the first time in the utterance of her brief sentences, turned her head, and looked at him with her faded, tired eyes.
Owen's own eyes were wet. ”Even before that,” he said, ”and I do not deny how important it is to me--more important than anything else in the world--even before that, Madam Carroll, I beg you to say that you forgive me, that you forgive what I did and said. I did not know--how could I?--and I was greatly troubled.”
”I think I can say that I have forgiven you,” answered Madam Carroll. ”I did not at first; I did not for a long time. It is all over now; and of course you did not know. But you never understood my son--you could not; and therefore--if you will be so good--I should prefer that you should not speak to me of him again; it is much the easiest way for us both.”
She turned her eyes back to the wall. ”About Sara,” she continued, without pause, ”it was a pity. It has been a long time for you to wait--with that--that mistaken belief on your mind. But, while the Major was still with us in his consciousness and his memory, I could not tell to you, a stranger, what I was not able to tell him.”
”You were afraid to trust me!” said Owen, a pained expression coming into his face.
”Yes,” answered Madam Carroll, simply.
”You did not know then that I felt as far as possible from being a stranger? That I wished--that I have tried--”
”That is later; I was coming to that. Yes--since I have known that you cared so much for her (though I knew it long ago!)--since you have spoken, rather, I have felt that I wished to tell you, that I would gladly tell you, as soon as I could. The time has come, and it came earlier than I expected, though I knew it could not be long delayed. I have taken the earliest hour.”
”Then she--then Miss Carroll told you that I--that I had spoken?” said Owen.
”She told me because I asked her, pressed her. I knew that you had been here--a week ago, wasn't it?--I had caught a glimpse of your face as you left the house. And so I asked her. She is very reticent, very proud; she would never have told me, in spite of my asking, if her wish to show me that I had been mistaken in something I had said to her long before had not been stronger even than her reserve.”