August 25. I went over to George's this morning to find out whether he is able to see Mr. Longworthy. He was in bed, but insisted upon seeing me. I have had a terrible day. I left him completely broken down with his confession. O Mother! Mother!

August 26. Childishly I cried myself to sleep last night. It is so terrible to feel that a friend has done wrong and proved himself unworthy. I could not help shivering to think of George, and of how he has had night after night to go to sleep with the knowledge of his dishonesty. I settled in my own mind what I could do to cover his defalcation, which fortunately is small enough for me to provide for by going to Boston and selling some of the bonds Aunt Leah left me, and which Mr. Longworthy has nothing to do with. Then I lay there in the dark and sopped my pillow, until somehow, I found myself in the middle of a comforting dream.

I dreamed that I was a little girl, and that I was broken-hearted about some indefinite thing that had happened. I had in my dream, so far as I can recall, no idea what the trouble was, but the grief was keen, and my tears most copious. I was in the very thickest of my childish woe when Father came behind me, picked me up like a feather, and set me down in his lap. I had that ineffable sense of companionship which can be named but never described, and I clung to him with a frantic clasp. He kissed me, and wiped away my tears with soothing words, and then at last he whispered in my ear as a precious secret something so infinitely comforting that my sorrow vanished utterly. I broke into smiles, and kissed him again and again, crying out that it was too good to be true, and he had made me happy for my whole life. So keen was my joy that I awoke, and lay in bed half dreaming still, saying over and over to myself his enchanting words as if they would forever be a safeguard against any pain which life might bring. Gradually I became sufficiently wide awake to realize what this wonderful message of joy was, and found myself ecstatically repeating: "Pigs have four feet and one tail!" Of course I laughed at the absurdity, but the comfort stayed with me all the same, and all day I have gone about with a peaceful mind, cheered by the effect of this supernaturally precious fact of natural history.

I went to Boston and came back without seeing anybody but business men.

I saw George a moment on my way from the station, and now everything is ready for Mr. Longworthy to-morrow. Both George and I may sleep to-night in peace.

All the way to and from Boston I found myself going over my whole acquaintance with George, questioning myself about what he has been and what he is. To-night I have been reading over what I have written of him in my diary, and the picture I find of him this year has gone to my heart. I am afraid I have not been kind, perhaps have not been just; for if what I have been writing is true George is--he is not a gentleman. It does not startle me now to write this as it would have done two days ago. I am afraid it will be years before I am able to get out of my remembrance how he looked when he confessed. It seems almost as if I should never be able to think of him again except as I saw him then, his face almost as colorless as his pillow, and then red with shame. He looked shrunken, morally as well as physically. I do not know whether I blamed him more or less because he was so eager to throw the whole blame on his wife's extravagance; I only know that it can hardly have been more cruel for him to tell me of his dishonor than it was for me to hear.

If he had asked me I would have lent him money, or given it to him, for that matter, and done it gladly rather than to have him troubled. To think how he must have been teased and bothered for this pitiful sum, just two or three hundred dollars, before he could have made up his mind to borrow it on my securities! He might have got it honestly, it was so little; but he did not wish anybody to know he needed it. Pride, and folly, and vanity,--I am so hurt that I begin to rail. I will put the whole thing out of my mind, and never think of it again if I can help it.

IX

SEPTEMBER

September 15. At last Kathie is gone. What with having dressmakers and seeing to her, and doing the shopping, and corresponding with the princ.i.p.al of the school, and all the rest of it, I have had my hands full for the last three weeks. I have enjoyed it, though; I suppose it is always a pleasure partaking of the moral for a woman when she can conscientiously give her whole mind up to the making of clothes. I do not doubt the delight of sewing fig-leaves together went for the moment far toward comforting Eve for leaving Paradise. I cannot now help smiling to see how entirely Kathie's fine scruples about breaking her vow not to come into the house were forgotten when I had a dressmaker here waiting to fit her frocks.

I feel a little as if I were trying to be Providence and to interfere in her life unwarrantably now she is gone and there is nothing more to do about it but to await the result. I have done what I thought best, though, and that is the whole of it. As Father used to say, it is not our duty to do the wisest thing, for we cannot always tell what it is, but only to be honest in doing what seems to us wisest. I hope she will do well, and I believe she will.

September 17. Cousin Mehitable writes me from Rome that she is sure I am tired of baby, and had better come over for a couple of months. I cannot tell whether she means what she says, or is only trying to carry her point. She has never had a child near her, and can hardly know how completely a baby takes possession of one. There are many things in the world that I should enjoy, and I should certainly delight in going abroad again, but baby has so taken the first place in my heart and life that everything else is secondary. I wonder sometimes whether after a woman has a child of her own she can any longer give her husband her very warmest love. Perhaps the law of compensation comes in, and if men grow less absorbed in their wives the wives have an equal likelihood of coming to feel that the husband is less a part of their lives than the child. Only if a woman really loved a man--

September 18. It is a childish habit to break off in the middle of a sentence because one does not know how to finish it. I have been turning over the leaves of this book to see if I had done it often, and I have been amused and humiliated to find so many places where I have ended with a dash, like an hysterical schoolgirl. Yet I do not see just what one is to do when suddenly one finds a subject hopelessly too deep. Last night when I got to a place where I was balancing the love of a mother for her husband and for her child, I naturally realized suddenly that I had never had a child, and very likely never really loved a man. The love I had for George seems now so unreal that I feel completely fickle; although I believe I am generally pretty constant. I could not bear to think I am not loyal in my feelings. I have come to be so sure the George I was fond of never existed, though, that I can hardly have the same feelings I had before.

This is the sort of subject, however, which is sure to end in a dash if I go on with it, so it seems wiser to stop before such a catastrophe is reached.

September 19. To-day is Father's birthday. It is always a day which moves me a good deal. I can never be reminded of an anniversary like this without finding my head full of a swarm of thoughts. I cannot think of the beginning or the ending of Father's life without looking at it as a whole, and reckoning up somehow the effect of his having lived. This is the real question, I suppose, in regard to any life. He was to me so wonderful, he was so great a man, that I have almost to reason with myself to appreciate why the world in general does not better remember him. His life was and is so much to me that I find it hard to realize how narrow is the circle which ever even knew of him at all. His books and his decisions keep his name still in the memory of lawyers somewhat, and those who knew him will not easily forget; but after all this is so little in comparison to the fame he might have had.

How persistent is an old thought! I should have supposed this idea might have died long ago. Father himself answered it when he told Cousin Mehitable he was entirely satisfied if his part in the progress of humanity was conducted decently and in order; he was not concerned whether anybody knew he lived or did not know. "The thing is that I live as well as I can," he said, "and not that it should be known about. I shan't mind, Cousin Mehitable, whether anybody takes the trouble to praise me after I am dead, but I do think it may make some tiny difference to the race that I did my level best while I was alive."

I can see him now as he stood by the library fire saying this, with his little half whimsical smile, and I remember thinking as he spoke how perfectly he lived up to his theories. Certainly the best thing a man can leave to his children is a memory like that which I have of Father: a memory half love and half respect.

Father's feeling about the part of the individual in the general scheme of things was like certain oriental doctrines I have read since his death; and I suppose he may have been influenced by the writings of the East. He seemed to feel that he was part of a process, and that the lives of those who sometime would come after him might be made easier and happier if he lived well and wisely. I am sure he was right. I do not know how or where or when the accounts of life are settled, or whether it makes any difference to the individual as an individual or not; but I am sure what we do is of consequence, and I wish my life might be as fine, as strong, as n.o.ble as was Father's.

September 20. Aunt Naomi came in this forenoon with her catlike step, and seated herself by the south window in the sunshine. The only eye which could be seen clearly was bright with intention, and it was evident at a glance that she had things to say. She was rather deliberate in coming at it. Aunt Naomi is an artist in gossip, and never spoils the effect of what she has to tell by failing to arouse expectation and interest. She leads one on and stirs up curiosity before she tells her news, and with so much cleverness does she manage, that a very tiny bit of gossip will seem a good deal when she has set it forth. It is a pleasure to see anything well done, even gossip; so Aunt Naomi is an unfailing source of amus.e.m.e.nt to me,--which is perhaps not to my credit.

She made the usual remarks about the weather and asked after baby; she observed that from the way Miss Charlotte breathed when she was asleep in prayer-meeting last night she was afraid she had taken cold; she told me Ranny Gargan's divorced wife was at death's door again, and tried to get from me some sort of information of Rosa's feelings toward the possible widower; then she gradually and skillfully approached her real subject.

"It's strange how folks get over being in love when once they are married," she said, hitching her chair into the sunlight, which had moved a little from her while she talked.

I knew by her careless tone, too careless not to be intentional, that something was coming, but I would not help her. I simply smiled vaguely, and asked where the sewing-circle was to be next week. She was not disconcerted by the question, but neatly turned it to her uses.

"At Mrs. Tobey's," she answered. "I hope we shan't see anything unpleasant across the road."

"What do you mean?" I asked, rather startled at this plain allusion to George's house.

"They say George Weston and his wife do rather queer things sometimes."

I asked her at once to say exactly what she meant, and not to play with it. I added that I did not see why George and his wife should be so much discussed.

"They are talked about because they deserve it," Aunt Naomi returned, evidently delighted by the effect she had produced. "If they will quarrel so all the neighborhood can hear and see, of course people will talk about it. Why shouldn't they? We ought to take some interest in folks, I should think."

I was silent a minute. I wanted to know why she said this, and what George and his wife had been doing to make the village comment, but I would not go on gossiping about them, and I dropped the subject altogether. I made a remark about the Willeyville Fair. Aunt Naomi chuckled audibly, but she did not persist in talking about the Westons.

September 22. Rosa is once more in a state of excitement, and the household is correspondingly stirred. Hannah goes about with her head in the air and an expression of the most lofty scorn on her face; Rosa naturally resents this att.i.tude, both of mind and of body; so I have to act as a sort of buffer between the two.

The fuss is about Ranny again. I begin to feel that I should be justified in having him kidnapped and carried off to some far country, but I hardly see my way clear to measures so extreme. I am astonished to find that Aunt Naomi did not know all the facts about the illness of Ranny's wife; or perhaps she was too much occupied with the affairs of the Westons to tell the whole. Ranny seems this time to have got into real difficulty, and apparently as the result of his latest escapade is likely to pay a visit to the county jail. It seems that while he was pretty far gone in liquor ex-Mrs. Ranny came to plead with him to take her back and marry her over again. She having had the greatest difficulty in getting divorced from him in the first place, one would think she might be content to let well enough alone; but she is evidently madly fond of Gargan, who must be a good deal of an Adonis in his own world, so completely does he sway the hearts of the women, even though they know him to be brutal, drunken, disreputable, and generally worthless. On this occasion Ranny behaved worse than usual, and met his former wife's pet.i.tion by giving her a severe beating with the first thing which came to hand, the thing unluckily being an axe-handle. The poor woman is helpless in her bed, and Ranny has been taken possession of by the constable.

Rosa refuses to see anything in the incident which is in the least to the discredit of Ranny. I was in the garden this morning, and overheard her defending her lover against Hannah's severe censures upon him and upon Rosa for siding with him.

"Why shouldn't he beat his own wife when she deserved it," Rosa demanded, "and she nothing but a hateful, sharp-nosed pig?"

"She isn't his wife," Hannah retorted, apparently not prepared to protest against a doctrine so well established as that a man might beat his spouse.

"Well, she was, anyhow," persisted Rosa; "and that's the same thing. You can't put a man and his wife apart just by going to law. Father O'Rafferty said so."

"Oh, you can't, can't you?" Hannah said with scornful deliberation.

"Then you're a nice girl to be talking about marrying Ranny Gargan, if he's got one wife alive already."

This blow struck too near home, I fear, for Rosa's voice was pretty shrill when she retorted.

"What do you know about marrying anyhow, Hannah Elsmore? n.o.body wants to marry you, I'll be bound."

It seemed to be time to interfere, so I went nearer to the window and called to Rosa to come out to baby and me.

"Rosa," I said, when she appeared, flushed and angry, "I wish you wouldn't quarrel with Hannah."

"Then what for's she all the time twitting me about Ranny Gargan?"

demanded the girl with angry tears in her eyes. "She don't know what it is to care for a man anyhow, and what for does she be taking me up short when I'm that bad in my mind a'ready I can't stand it? Ranny Gargan's old beast of a wife's got him into a sc.r.a.pe, but that don't make any difference to me. I ain't going back on him."

I established myself on the gra.s.s beside the sun-dial, and took baby, sweet and lovely, into my arms.

"I am sorry, Rosa," I said when we were settled comfortably. "I hoped you'd got over thinking about Ranny Gargan. He is certainly not the sort of man to make you happy, even if he were free. He'd never think of sparing you or letting you have your own way."

"Who's wanting to have their own way, Miss Privet?" demanded my astonishing handmaid; and then went on in her usual fashion of striking me breathless when she comes to discourse of love and marriage. "That ain't what women marry for, Miss Privet. They're just made so they marry to be beat and broke and abused if that's what pleases the men; and that's the way they're best off."

"But, Rosa," I put in, "you always talk as if you'd be meekness itself if a husband wanted to abuse you, but I confess I never thought you would be at all backward about defending yourself."