"A poor man between his mother and his wife is in a desperate fix."
"He is, because he has no business to be in such a position. It is an unnatural one--a forbidden one. Until a man is willing to give up his mother, he has no right to take a wife. Under all conditions it must be one or the other; the two existing happily together are so rare, that they are merely exceptions that prove the rule."
"It would have been very hard on my mother, had I given her up for a wife."
"Yet your mother took her husband away from his mother, and so backward goes it, to the Eden days of every race. And you also made the same mistake that Rebekah told Isaac she was weary of her life for--you married a stranger, and because of this, she is continually asking, as Rebekah did, What good is my life to me with this daughter of Heth under my roof? And also she has made our lives of no good to us!"
"Is it not my duty to love and honor my mother? Is it not right?"
"It is your duty, and your right also, to love and honor the wife whom you have persuaded to leave her father and mother, her home and friends."
"Then the right of the mother, and the right of the wife, are both positive?"
"So positive that both cannot be served in the same place, and at the same time; for the one right will be broken to pieces against the other right, since there is no community of feeling between the family claim of the mother and the moral and natural claim of the wife."
"Then what is a man to do?"
""A man shall leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife." That is the imperative, and ultimate decision of the G.o.d and Father of us all. And if it were not the nearly universal rule, what miserable, loveless children would be born, and how the jealous, quarrelling families of the earth would have become hateful in G.o.d"s sight. We have only to consider our own case. Until your mother came between us, we loved each other truly, and were very happy."
"A man with a big business, Dora, has something else to think of than love."
"In his hours of business, yes; but in his hours of relaxation, his love ought to rest and refresh him." There was a movement in the next room, and Theodora went there with light, swift steps. Robert was walking moodily up and down, and through the open door he saw her kneeling by a large chair, and David"s arms were round her neck, and she was telling him he must now go to bed. "Were you tired, that you fell asleep here?"
she asked, and he answered: "I was waiting for you, mother, to hear my prayer, and kiss me good-night; and the sleep came to me."
Then she sat down, and David knelt at her knees, and said the Lord"s prayer, adding to it a pet.i.tion for blessing on his father, his grandmother Campbell, his aunts Isabel and Christina, his grandfather and grandmother Newton, and his dear mother, with a final pet.i.tion that G.o.d would love David and make him a good boy. It was a scene so sweet and natural that Robert stood still in respect to the simple rite, vaguely wondering in what forgotten life he had spoken words like them.
Then Theodora called Ducie, and gave the child into her care, but as he was leaving the room he saw his father, and running to him, he said: "Father, kiss David too." Robert"s heart stirred to the eager request, and he lifted the little lad in his arms, and actually did kiss him. In that moment the pretty face with its glances so free, so bright, so seeking, without guile or misgiving, impressed itself on Robert"s memory forever. Even after the child had gone away, he felt as if he still held him, and the consciousness of the soft, rosy cheek against his own was so vivid that he put his hand up and stroked his cheek until the sensation left him.
He was really in a great strait of feeling, and, if he could not do right of himself, was in a strait, out of which there was no other decent way. He looked longingly at Theodora, who had resumed her work, and her pale, pa.s.sionless face touched him by its complete contrast to the face he had just left--the hard, gossipy, pitiless, scornful face of his mother. He could not forget his son"s prayer. He knew it well, he himself was never one to prompt, nor to correct, so it was certain that Theodora had taught the boy to pray for those who constantly spoke evil of her. He resolved to tell his mother of this incident, and again he tried to read the feeling on his wife"s face. It was not depression, it was not sorrow, it was far from anger, there was nothing of indifference in it, and nothing restless or uncertain. He did not understand it. How could such a man as Robert understand a life of pure piety and intelligence, working its way upward through love and pain.
He sat down by her and touched her hand, but said only one word: "Theodora!" She lifted her sad, lovely eyes to his. "Theodora!" he said again, and she laid her hand in his, and whispered "Robert!" Then his kiss brought back the color to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, and when he vowed that he loved her and David more dearly than any other mortals, she believed him; and found sweet words to excuse all his faults, and to tell him he was "loved with all her heart."
Was she a foolish woman to forgive so easily, and so much? It was because she loved so much that she could forgive so much, and of such loving, foolish hearts is the Kingdom of Heaven. For no love is so swift and welcome as returning love. Even the angels desire to witness the reunion of hearts that have been kept apart by fault, or fate, and as for Theodora, she had the courage to be happy in this promise of better days, knowing that she came not to this house by accident, but that it was the very place G.o.d had chosen for her. Besides which, the heart has its arguments as well as the head, and at this hour she was judging Robert by her love, and not by her understanding.
CHAPTER IX
THE LAST STRAW
For a few days Theodora clung tenaciously to her hope, but it had only told her a flattering tale. Robert had gradually fallen below the plane--moral and intellectual--on which his wife lived; and it was only by a painful endeavor, that he returned to the Robert of six years previously. His wife"s conversation, though bright and clever, was not as pleasant to him as his mother"s biting gossip about the house and the callers; and he could a.s.sume a slippered, careless toilet in her presence, that made him uncomfortable when at the side of the always prettily gowned Theodora. For when such a circ.u.mstance happened, he involuntarily felt compelled to apologize, and he did not think apologies belonged to his position as master of the house. He had lost his taste for music, unless there was some stranger present whom he desired to make envious or astonished; in fact he had descended to that commonplace stage of love, which values a wife or a mistress only according to the value set upon her by outsiders--by their envy and jealousy of himself, as the clever winner of such an extraordinary artist, or beauty. Consequently, in a time of economy, forbidding the entertainment of strangers, Theodora"s hours of supremacy were likely to be few and far between.
But this fact did not trouble Robert. He came home from the works tired of the business world, and the household chatter of his mother was a relief that cost him no surrender of any kind. Yet had Theodora attempted the same role, he would have seen and felt at once its malice and injustice, and despised her for destroying his ideals and illusions.
Thus, even her excellencies were against her. Again, Mrs. Campbell disguised much of the real character of her abuse, in the picturesqueness of the Scotch patois; nothing she said in this form sounded as wicked and cruel as it would have done in plain English. But this disguise would have been a ridiculous effort in Theodora, and could only have subjected her to scorn and laughter; while it was native to her enemy, and a vivid and graphic vehicle both for her malice and her mockery.
Thus, when Robert was rising to go to his own parlor, she would say: "Smoke another cigar, Robert, or light your pipe, boy. I dinna dislike a pipe, I may say freely, I rather fancy it. It doesna remind me o" the stable, and I have no nerves to be shocked by its vulgarity. G.o.d be thankit, I was born before nerves were in fashion! And He knows that one nervous woman in a house is mair than enou". I am sorry for ye, my lad!"
"It is not Dora"s nerves, mother; it is her refined taste. She thinks a pipe low, common, plebeian, you know, and for the same reason she hates me to wear a cap--she thinks it makes me look like a workingman. Dora is quite aristocratic, you know," and he mimicked the English accent and idioms, and saw nothing repellent in an old woman giggling at him.
"It is nerves, my lad," she answered, "pure nerves, and nerves are a"
imagination. Whenever did I, or your sisters, or any o" our flesh and blood have an attack o" the nerves? Whenever did a decent pipe o"
tobacco, or the smell o" a good salt herring mak" any o" us sick at the stomach? Was there ever a Campbell made vulgar, or low, by a cap on his head? "Deed they are pretty men always, but prettiest of a" when they are wearing the Glengary wi" a sprig o" myrtle in the front o" it.
_Dod!_ it makes me scunner at some folks" aristocracy. I trow, I am as weel born as any Methodist preacher"s daughter, and I have kin behind me and around me to show it; but you can smoke a pipe, or cap your head, or slipper your feet, and my fine feelings willna suffer for a moment."
"You are mother--you understand."
"To be sure I do. Poor lad, ye hae lots to fret ye, and nane need a pipe o" tobacco, or an easy _deshabille_ mair than you do; if you are understanding what I mean by _deshabille_--I"m not vera sure mysel", but I"m thinking it means easy fitting clothes on ye; that is my meaning o"
the word anyhow, and I don"t care a bawbee, whether it is the French meaning or not."
"You are all right, mother. You generally are all right."
"I am always all right, Robert; and that you find out in the long run, don"t ye, my lad?"
Her conversation was constantly of this vulgar, commonplace type, but it carried home veiled doubts and innuendos, as no other form could have done; and it was homelike and familiar to Robert. With it as the vehicle for her flattery and her iron will, she managed her son as no sensitive, truthful, honorable woman could have done, unless she flung delicacy, truth, and honor aside, and went down into moral slums to find her ways and weapons.
On the fourth evening after the promising reconciliation, Robert said: "I want a whiff of strong tobacco, Dora. I have been fretted all day, so I will go into the library to smoke to-night."
"I will go with you, Robert. I do not believe the tobacco will make me sick. You know when it did so, there were reasons why----"
"You must do nothing of the kind, Dora. I cannot have you made ill, and the fear of it doing so would take away all the comfort I might derive from it."
"But, Robert----"
"No, no! I shall come to the parlor, and smoke a cigar, if you insist."
"I shall not insist. You will not stay long away from me, dear?"
"When my smoke is finished, I will come."
Then he went to the library, and in a few minutes his mother followed him there. As housekeeper, she had formulated less extravagant menus for the table, and some other small economies, and their discussion was her excellent excuse--if she needed an excuse, which she rarely did. Among these economies, the dismissal of Ducie came to question again, and Robert said he "thought Ducie would have to remain. Dora had set her heart on keeping her," he continued, "and I think it will also be more comfortable for me, mother."
"Nonsense! It will not affect you in any way."
"There is Dora"s breakfast, who is to carry it upstairs to her?"
"It is quite time that nonsense was stopped! Let the high-stomached English "my lady" come to the family breakfast table. It is good enou"
for the like o" her. But I"ll tell you how it is. McNab has the habit o"
humoring her wi" dainties--mushrooms on toast, a few chicken livers, and the like; and our decent oatmeal, and bread and feesh, arena as delicate as food should be, for this daughter o" a poor Methodist preacher."
"Come, mother, her father at least is a servant of G.o.d, one of His messengers, and there is no n.o.bility like to that in this world. You know well, that Scotland has always paid more honor to G.o.d"s servants, than to the servants of earthly princes."
"Scotsmen arena infallible in their religious views. I ken one thing sure, and that is ministers" daughters hae been the deil"s daughters to me, and to my sons--vera Eves o" temptation wi" the apple o" sin and misery in their hands for my two bonnie lads."
"I wonder, mother, where my brother is."
"He is dead. I comfort mysel" wi" that thought. Death was the best thing that could happen him. The poor lad, not long out o" his teens, and tied to a wife, and to the wife"s mother likewise. Never was a finer lad flung to the mischief than your brother Da--nay, my tongue willna speak his name. Now then, remember your brother, and don"t let your wife ruin you, Robert."