"Dear Aunt Peace," said Margaret, softly, "you found a bit of human driftwood, and with your love and your patience made it into a beautiful woman."
The old face softened, and the serene eyes grew dim. "Whenever I think that my life has been in vain; when it seems empty, purposeless, and bare, I look at my little girl, remember what she was, and find content.
I think that a great deal will be forgiven me, because I have done well with her."
"I am so glad you told me," continued Margaret, after a little.
"Her future has sorely troubled me. Of course I can make her comfortable, but money is not everything. I dread to have her go away from East Lancaster, and yet----"
"She never need go," interrupted Margaret. "If, as you say, the house comes to me, there is no reason why she should. I would be so glad to have her with me!"
"Thank you, my dear! It was what I wanted, but I did not like to ask.
Now my mind will be at rest."
"It is little enough to do for you, leaving her out of the question. She might be a great deal less lovely than she is, and yet it would be a pleasure to do it for you."
"She will repay you, I am sure," said Aunt Peace. "Of course Lynn will marry sometime,"--here the mother"s heart stopped beating for an instant and went on unevenly,--"so you will be left alone. You cannot expect to keep him in a place like East Lancaster. He is--how old?"
"Twenty-three."
"Then, in a few years more, he will leave you." Aunt Peace was merely meditating aloud as she looked out of the window, and had no idea that she was hurting her listener. "Perhaps, after all, Iris will be my best bequest to you."
"Iris may marry," suggested Mrs. Irving, trying to smile.
"Iris," repeated Aunt Peace, "no indeed! I have made her an old-fashioned spinster like myself. She has never thought of such things, and never will!"
(At the moment, Miss Temple was reading an anonymous letter, much worn, but, though walls have ears, they are happily blind, and Aunt Peace did not realise that she was nowhere near the mark.)
"Marriage is a negative relation," continued Miss Field, with an air of knowledge. "People undertake it from an unpardonable individual curiosity. They see it all around them, and yet they rush in, blindly trusting that their own venture will turn out differently from every other. Someone once said that it was like a crowded church--those outside were endeavouring to get in, and those inside were making violent efforts to get out. Personally, I have had the better part of it. I have my home, my independence, and I have brought up a child.
Moreover, I have not been annoyed with a husband."
"Suppose one falls in love," said Margaret, timidly.
"Love!" exclaimed Aunt Peace. "Stuff and nonsense!" She rose majestically, and went out with her head high and the step of a grenadier.
Left to herself, Margaret mentally reviewed their conversation, pa.s.sing resolutely over the hurt that Aunt Peace had unconsciously made in her heart. Never before had it occurred to her that Lynn might marry. "He can"t," she whispered; "why, he"s nothing but a child."
She turned her thoughts to Iris and Aunt Peace. The homeless little savage had grown into a charming woman, under the patient care of the only mother she had ever known. If Aunt Peace should die--and if Lynn should marry,--she did not phrase the thought, but she was very conscious of its existence,--she and Iris might make a little home for themselves in the old house. Two men, even the best of friends, can never make a home, but two women, on speaking terms, may do so.
"If Lynn should marry!" Insistently, the torment of it returned. If he should fall in love, who was she to put a barrier in his path? His mother, whose heart had been hungry all these years, should she keep him back by so much as a word? Then, all at once, she knew that it was her own warped life which demanded it by way of compensation.
"No," she breathed, with her lips white, "I will never stand in his way.
Because I have suffered, he shall not." Then she laughed hysterically.
"How ridiculous I am!" she said to herself. "Why, he is nothing but a child!"
The mood pa.s.sed, and the woman"s soul began to dwell upon its precious memories. Mnemosyne, that guardian angel, forever separates the wheat from the chaff, the joy from the pain. At the touch of her hallowed fingers, the heartache takes on a certain calmness, which is none the less beautiful because it is wholly made of tears.
Lynn"s violin was silent now, and softly, from the back of the house, the girl"s full contralto swelled into a song.
"The hours I spent with thee, Dear Heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over, every one apart-- My rosary! My rosary!"
Iris sang because she was happy, but, none the less, the deep, vibrant voice had an undertone of sadness--a world-old sorrow which, by right of inheritance, was hers.
Margaret"s thoughts went back to her own girlhood, when she was no older than the unseen singer. Love"s cup had been at her lips, then, and had been dashed away by a relentless hand.
"O memories that bless and burn!
O barren pain and bitter loss!
I kiss each bead and strive at last to learn To kiss the cross--Sweetheart! To kiss the cross!"
""To kiss the cross,"" muttered Margaret, then the tears came in a blinding flood. "Mother! Mother!" she sobbed. "How could you!"
Insensibly, something was changed, and, for the first time, the woman who had gone to her grave unforgiven, seemed not entirely beyond the reach of pardon.
IX
Rosemary and Mignonette
"Sweet Lady of my Dreams, it cannot be that you are displeased. If you were, I should know, but do not ask me how!
"Day by day, my eyes long for the sight of you; night by night my heart remembers you, for that inner vision does not vanish with the sun. You have unconsciously given me a priceless gift, for wherever I may go, I take you with me--all the grace of you, all the beauty, and all the softness. I have only to close my eyes and then I see.
"But do not think I keep your image always before me, for it is not so.
In the work-a-day world, you have no place. You belong, rather, to those fair lands of fancy which lie just beyond the borders of this world and are, or so I think, very near the gleaming gates of Heaven.
"I am not always at work, but sometimes, even when I am, you come tripping before my eyes, so dainty, so wholly exquisite, that I forget what I am doing, and then I must put you aside. But when the day is done, and the light of it shows only through the pinholes p.r.i.c.ked in the curtain of night, then I can think of you, as radiant, as beautiful, and as far above me as those very stars.
"All unknowingly, you are the light of my day. Whatever darkness might surround me, your eyes would make it noon. However steep and th.o.r.n.y my path, your hand in mine would make it a sunny meadow, swept by shadowy wings, where the white and crimson clover bloomed all day.
"You give me life. You make the birds sing more sweetly for me; you make the roses more fragrant, the moonlight more like pearl. You have glorified the commonplace affairs of the day with your enchantment; you have put the joy of the G.o.ds into the heart of a man.
"Do you wonder that, loving you like this, I do not make myself known?
Sweetheart, it is because I fear. Already I have more than I deserve because you are not displeased with me, and since I wrote last I have made progress. Would it surprise you very much if I told you I knew where you lived?
"I fancy I see you now, with the scarlet signals flaming on your cheeks, but, Iris, I shall never intrude. It is for you to say whether I shall love you in silence and afar, or face to face, as I dream that some day I may.
"I want you, dear--I want you with all my heart. Of all the women in the world, you are the one G.o.d meant for me. Otherwise, why have I been so strangely led to you?
"Since the first day I saw you, I have knelt at your feet. Not for one moment have I forgotten you, so flower-like, so womanly, so dear. So will it always be, whether I live or die. Even to my grave, I shall take the memory of you.
"To-night my memories are few, but my dreams--they are so many that I could not begin to tell you all. But one of them you must know--that some day you will let me tell you how much I love you, and promise me that I may shield you all the rest of your life.
"The wind should never make you cold, the sun should never shine too fiercely upon you, the storm should never beat against you, if I had my way.
"Iris, may I come? Will you let me teach you to care? So sure am I of my love that I ask only for the chance to make you believe.