CHAPTER XV
SHOWS THE TYRANNY OF WEAKNESS
Three days later the bay horse returned at a gallop with Jonathan Gay in the saddle. At the head of the steps Kesiah was standing, and she answered the young man"s anxious questions with a manner which she tried to make as sympathetic as the occasion required. This effort to adjust her features into harmony with her feelings had brought her brows together in a forbidding scowl and exaggerated the harsh lines between mouth and chin.
"Am I in time?" he asked in a trembling voice, and his hand reached out to her for support.
"The immediate danger is over, Jonathan," she answered, while she led him into the library and closed the door softly behind them. "For hours we despaired of her recovery, but the doctors say now that if there is no other shock, she may live on for months."
"I got your note last night in Washington," he returned. "It was forwarded by mail from Applegate. Is the doctor still with her?"
"No, he has just gone. The rector is there now. She finds him a great comfort."
"It was so sudden, Aunt Kesiah--she appeared well when I left her. What caused the attack?"
"A talk she had had with Mr. Chamberlayne. It seems he thought it best to prepare her for the fact that your Uncle Jonathan left a good deal of his property--it amounts to an income of about ten thousand a year, I believe, to Reuben Merryweather"s granddaughter when she comes of age.
Of course it wasn"t the money--Angela never gave that a thought--but the admission that the girl was his illegitimate daughter that struck so heavy a blow."
"But surely she must have suspected---"
"She has never suspected anything in her life. It is a part of her sweetness, you know, that she never faces an unpleasant fact until it is literally thrust on her notice. As long as your uncle was so devoted to her and so considerate, she thought it a kind of disloyalty to inquire as to the rest of his life. Once I remember, twenty years ago, when that poor distraught creature came to me--I went straight to Angela and tried to get her to use her influence with her uncle for the girl"s sake. But at the first hint, she locked herself in her room and refused to let me come near her. Then it was that I had that terrible quarrel with Mr.
Gay, and he hardly spoke to me again as long as he lived. I believe, though, he would have married Janet after my talk with him except for Angela"s illness, which was brought on by the shock of hearing him speak of his intention." She sighed wonderingly, her anxious frown deepening between her eyebrows. "They both seemed to think that in some way I was to blame for the whole thing," she added, "and your uncle never forgave me. It"s the same way now. Mr. Chamberlayne spoke quite angrily to me when he saw the effect of his interview. He appeared to think that I ought to have prevented it."
"Could it have been kept from her, do you suppose?"
"That looked impossible, and of course, he broke it to her very gently.
He also, you know, has all his life had a sentiment about Angela, and that, I think is why he never married. He told me once that she came nearer than any woman he had ever seen to representing every man"s ideal."
"What I can"t understand is why she should have been so upset by the discovery?"
"Well, she was very fond of your uncle, and she has cherished quite romantically the memory of his affection for her. I think--for that is Angela"s way--that he means much more to her dead than he did living--and this, she says, has blackened the image."
"But even then it seems incomprehensible that it should have made her really so ill."
"Oh, you don"t know her yet, Jonathan. I remember your uncle used to say that she was more like a flower than a woman, and he was always starting alarms about her health. We lived in a continual panic about her for several years, and it was her weakness, as much as her beauty, that gave her her tremendous power over him. He was like wax in her hands, though of course he never suspected it."
The tread of Mr. Mullen was heard softly on the staircase, and he entered with his hand outstretched from the starched cuff that showed beneath the sleeve of his black broadcloth coat. Pausing on the rug, he glanced from Kesiah to Jonathan with a grave and capable look, as though he wished them to understand that, having settled everything with perfect satisfaction in the mind of Mrs. Gay, he was now ready to perform a similar office for the rest of the household.
"I am thankful to say that I left your dear mother resting peacefully,"
he observed in a whisper. "You must have had a distressing journey, Mr.
Gay?"
"I was very much alarmed," replied Gay, with a nervous gesture as if he were pushing aside a disagreeable responsibility. "The note took three days to find me, and I didn"t know until I got here whether she was alive or dead."
"It is easy to understand your feelings," returned the rector, still whispering though Gay had spoken in his natural voice. "Such a mother as yours deserves the most careful cherishing that you can give her. To know her has been an inspiration, and I am never tired of repeating that her presence in the parish, and occasional attendance at church, are privileges for which we should not forget to be thankful. It is not possible, I believe, for any woman to approach more closely the perfect example of her s.e.x."
"Perhaps I had better go up to her at once. We are deeply grateful to you, Mr. Mullen, for your sympathy."
"Who would not have felt?" rejoined the other, and taking up his hat from the table, he went out, still treading softly as though he were walking upon something he feared to hurt.
"Poor mother! It"s wonderful the way she has with people!" exclaimed Gay, turning to Kesiah.
"She"s always had it with men--there"s something so appealing about her.
You"ll be very careful what you say to her, Jonathan."
"Oh, I"ll not confess my sins, if that"s what you mean," he responded as he ascended the staircase.
The room was fragrant with burning cedar, and from the dormer-windows, latticed by boughs, a band of sunlight stretched over the carpet to the high white bed in which his mother was lying. Her plaintive blue eyes, which clung to him when he entered, appeared to say; "Yes, see how they have hurt me--a poor frail creature." Above her forehead her hair, which was going grey, broke into a mist, and spread in soft, pale strands over the pillow. Never had her helpless sweetness appealed so strongly to his emotions, as when she laid her hand on his arm and said in an apologetic whisper:
"Dear boy, how I hated to bring you back."
"As if I wouldn"t have come from the end of the world, dearest mother,"
he answered.
He had fallen on his knees by her bed, but when Kesiah brought him a chair, he rose and settled himself more comfortably.
"I wanted you, dear, but if you knew how I dreaded to become a drag on you. Men must be free, I know--never let me interfere with your freedom--I feel such a helpless, burdensome creature."
"If you could only see how young and lovely you look even when you are ill, you would never fear becoming a burden. In spite of your grey hairs, you might pa.s.s for a girl at this minute."
"You wicked flatterer!--but, oh, Jonathan, I"ve had a blow!"
"I understand. It must have been rough."
"And to think how I always idealized him!--how I had believed in his love for me and cherished his memory! To discover that even at the last--on his deathbed--he was thinking of that woman!"
She wept gently, wiping her eyes with a resigned and suffering gesture on the handkerchief Kesiah had handed her. "I feel as if my whole universe had crumbled," she said.
"But it was no affront to you, mother--it all happened before he saw you, and was only an episode. Those things don"t bite into a man"s life, you know."
"Of course, I knew there had been something, but I thought he had forgotten it--that he was faithful to his love for me--his spirit worship, he called it. Then to find out so long after his death--when his memory had become a part of my religion--that he had turned back at the end."
"It wasn"t turning away from you, it was merely an atonement. Your influence was visible even there."
"I am sorry for the child, of course," she said sadly, after weeping a little--"who knows but she may have inherited her mother"s character?"
"The doctor said you were to be quiet, Angela," remarked Kesiah, who had stood at the foot of the bed in the att.i.tude of a Spartan. "Jonathan, if you begin to excite her, you"d better go."
"Oh, my boy, my darling boy," sobbed Mrs. Gay, with her head on his shoulder, "I have but one comfort and that is the thought that you are so different--that you will never shatter my faith in you. If you only knew how thankful I am to feel that you are free from these dreadful weaknesses of men."
Cowed by her helplessness, he looked down on her with shining eyes.
"Remember the poor devil loved you, mother, and be merciful to his memory," he replied, touched, for the first time, by the thought of his uncle.