Part 23 (1/2)
They rained on Natalie's head.
”Mother!” cried Natalie, looking up--”Mother!” Then she buried her face again in Ann's bosom, and together they sobbed out all the oppressing pain and grief of life's heavy moment. Not by strength alone, but also by frailty, do mothers hold the hearts of their children. Natalie, hearing and feeling her mother sob, pa.s.sed beyond the bourn of generations and knew Ann and herself as one in an indivisible, quivering humanity.
Mammy's chair stopped rocking. She listened; then she got up and came out on the veranda. Her eyes fell upon mother and daughter huddled together in the dusk. She hovered over them. Her loose clothes made her seem ample, almost stolid.
”Wha' fo' you chilun's crying?” she demanded.
”We're _not_ crying,” sobbed Natalie.
”Huh!” snorted mammy. ”Yo' jes come along outen this night air, bof of yo', an' have yo' suppah. Come on along, Miss Ann. Come on along, yo'
young Miss Natalie.”
”Just a minute, mammy; in just a minute,” gasped Natalie. ”You go put supper on the table.” Then she rose to her feet, and drew her mother up to her. ”Kiss me,” she said and smiled. She was suddenly strong again with the strength of youth.
Ann kissed her and she, too, almost smiled.
”Well, dear?” she said.
”We're going away,” said Natalie, holding protecting arms around her mother. ”We're going to sell this place, and then we're just going away into another world. This one's too rough for just women. We'll go see that old house Aunt Jed left to me. I want to live just once in a house that has had more than one life.”
Day after day the s.h.i.+p moved steadily northward on an even keel. Upon mammy, Natalie, and Mrs. Leighton a miracle began to descend. Years fell from their straightening shoulders. At the end of a week, Ann Leighton, kneeling alone in her cabin, began her nightly devotions with a paean that sounded strangely in her own ears: ”Oh, Thou Who hast redeemed my life from destruction, crowned me with loving-kindness and tender mercies, Who hast satisfied my mouth with good things so that my youth is renewed like the eagle's!”
CHAPTER XXVII
Among Leighton's many pet theories was one that he called the axiom of the propitious moment. Any tyro at life could tell that a thing needed saying; skill came in knowing how to wait to say it. At Lady Derl's dinner Leighton had decided to go away for several months. He had something to say to Lewis before he went, but he pa.s.sed nervous days waiting to say it. Then came the propitious moment. They were sitting alone over a cheerful small fire that played a sort of joyful accompaniment to the outdoor struggle of spring against the cold.
”In every society,” said Leighton, breaking a long silence, ”where women have been numerically predominant, the popular conception of morality has been lowered. Your historical limitations are such that you'll have to take my say-so for the truth of that generality.”
”Yes, sir,” said Lewis.
”Man's greatest illusion in regard to woman,” continued Leighton, ”is that she's fastidious. Men are fastidious and vulgar; women are neither fastidious nor vulgar. There's a reason. Women have been too intimately connected through the ages with the slops of life to be fastidious.
That's driven them to look upon natural things with natural eyes. They know that vulgarity isn't necessary, and they revolt from it. These are all generalities, of course.”
”Yes, sir,” said Lewis.
”Women are very wonderful. They are an unconscious incarnation of knowledge. Knowledge bears the same relation to the wise that liquor does to the man who decided the world would be better without alcohol and started to drink it all up. Man's premier temptation is to drink up women. Lots of men start to do it, but that's as far as they get. One woman can absorb a dozen men; a dozen men can't absorb one woman.
Women--any one woman--is without end. Am I boring you?”
”No, sir,” said Lewis. ”You are giving me a perspective.”
”You've struck the exact word. Since we met, I've given you several of my seven lives, but there's one life a man can't pa.s.s on to his son--his life with relation to women. He can only give, as you said, a perspective.”
Leighton chose a cigar carefully and lit it.
”Formerly woman had but one mission,” he went on. ”She arrived at it when she arrived at womanhood. The fas.h.i.+onable age for marriage was fifteen. Civilization has pushed it along to twenty-five. Those ten c.u.mulative years have put a terrific strain on woman. On the whole, she has stood it remarkably well. But as modernity has reduced our animalism, it has increased our fundamental immorality and put a substantial blot on woman's mission as a mission. Woman has had to learn to dissemble charmingly, but in the bottom of her heart she has never believed that her mission is intrinsically shameful. That's why every woman feels her special case of sinning is right--until she gets caught.
Do you follow me?”
”I think so,” said Lewis.