"Where have you been?"
"Only in my room, mother."
"Doing what, my son?"
"Thinking --" he said a little unwillingly.
"Sit down and warm yourself," said his mother placing his chair again; -- "Why, your hands are warm now?"
"Yes ma"am -- I have been here a good while."
He sat down, where she had put his chair in front of the fireplace; and she stood warming herself before it, and looking at him. His face was in its usual calmness, and she thought as she looked it was an excellent face. Great strength of character -- great truth -- beneath the broad brow high intellectual capacity, and about the mouth a certain sweet self-possession; to the ordinary observer more cool than sweet, but his mother knew the sweetness.
"What are you thinking about, Winthrop?" she said softly, bending down near enough to lay a loving hand on his brow.
He looked up quickly and smiled, one of those smiles which his mother saw oftener than anybody, but she not often, -- a smile very revealing in its character, -- and said,
"Don"t ask me, mamma."
"Who should ask you, if not I?"
"There is no need to trouble you with it, mother."
"You can"t help that -- it will trouble me now, whether I know it or not; for I see it is something that troubles you."
"You have too good eyes, mother," he said smiling again, but a different smile.
"My ears are just as good."
"Mamma, I don"t want to displease you," he said looking up.
"You can"t do that -- you never did yet, Winthrop, my boy," she answered, bending down again and this time her lips to his forehead. "Speak -- I am not afraid."
He was silent a moment, and then mastering himself as it were with some difficulty, he said,
"Mamma, I want to be somebody!"
The colour flushed back and forth on his face, once and again, but beyond that, every feature kept its usual calm.
A shadow fell on his mother"s face, and for several minutes she stood and he sat in perfect silence; he not stirring his eyes from the fire, she not moving hers from him. When she spoke, the tone was changed, and though quiet he felt the trouble in it.
"What sort of a somebody, Winthrop?"
"Mamma," he said, "I can"t live here! I want to know more and to be more than I can here. I can, I am sure, if I only can find a way; and I am sure I can find a way. It is in me, and it will come out. I don"t want anybody to give me any help, nor to think of me; I can work my own way, if you"ll only let me and not be troubled about me."
He had risen from his chair to speak this. His mother kept her face in the shadow and said quietly,
"What way will you take, Winthrop?"
"I don"t know, ma"am, yet; I haven"t found out."
"Do you know the difficulties in the way?"
"No, mother."
It was said in the tone not of proud but of humble determination.
"My boy, they are greater than you think for, or than I like to think of at all."
"I dare say, mother."
"I don"t see how it is possible for your father to do more than put Will in the way he has chosen."
"I know that, mother," Winthrop replied, with again the calm face but the flushing colour; -- "he said yesterday -- I heard him --"
"What?"
"He said he would try to make a man of Rufus! I must do it for myself, mother. And I will."
His mother hardly doubted it. But she sighed as she looked, and sighed heavily.
"I ought to have made you promise not to be troubled, mamma,"
he said with a relaxing face.
"I am more careful of my promises than that," she answered.
"But, Winthrop, my boy, what do you want to do first?"
"To learn, mamma!" he said, with a singular flash of fire in his usual cool eye. "To get rid of ignorance, and then to get the power that knowledge gives. Rufus said the other day that knowledge is power, and I know he was right. I feel like a man with his hands tied, because I am so ignorant."
"You are hardly a man yet, Winthrop; you are only a boy in years."
"I am almost sixteen, mother, and I haven"t taken the first step yet."
What should the first step be? A question in the minds of both; the answer -- a blank.
"How long have you been thinking of this?"
"Since last spring, mother."
"Didn"t Will"s going put it in your head?"
"That gave me the first thought; but it would have made no difference, mother; it would have come, sooner or later. I know it would, by my feeling ever since."
Mrs. Landholm"s eye wandered round the room, the very walls in their humbleness and roughness reminding her anew of the labour and self-denial it had cost to rear them, and then to furnish them, and that was now expended in keeping the inside warm. Every brown beam and little window-sash could witness the story of privation and struggle, if she would let her mind go back to it; the a.s.sociations were on every hand; neither was the struggle over. She turned her back upon the room, and sitting down in Winthrop"s chair bent her look as he had done into the decaying bed of coals.
He was standing in the shadow of the mantelpiece, and looking down in his turn scanned her face and countenance as a little while before she had scanned his. Hers was a fine face, in some of the finest indications. It had not, probably it never had, the extreme physical beauty of her first-born, nor the mark of intellect that was upon the features of the second.
But there was the unmistakable writing of calm good sense, a patient and possessed mind, a strong power for the right, whether doing or suffering, a pure spirit; and that nameless beauty, earthly and unearthly, which looks out of the eyes of a mother; a beauty like which there is none. But more; toil"s work, and care"s, were there, very plain, on the figure and on the face, and on the countenance too; he could not overlook it; work that years had not had time to do, nor sorrow permission. His heart smote him.