Читать книгу The Heart that Knows - Charles George Douglas Roberts - Страница 6

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A prim, uncompromising house of two stories, shingled all over, and weather-beaten to a soft, dark gray, was the dwelling of Jim Calder and his mother. In spite of itself, as it were, it had a homey, comfortable air. Big apple-trees, with one white birch and one Lombardy poplar, stood at either end of it. Hop-vines and scarlet-runner beans grew all over its fences; and the little plot between the stoop and the front gate, on either side of the shell-bordered path, was bright with pink and purple sweet peas, orange nasturtiums, scarlet geraniums, pansies, and other old-fashioned blooms. Everything connected with it was aggressively clean. When Luella, standing for that brief moment at the foot of Lawrence’s Hill, stared in numb despair at the far-off light in the back window of Mrs. Calder’s house, she little guessed that Mrs. Calder was sitting by that light, her austere, faded face bitter with resentment, as she read and re-read an incoherent note of farewell from Jim. The mother, lonely but self-possessed, had expected to hold her son to her heart once again that night, before yielding him up to a wife whom she hated, and before bidding him good-bye for two long years. Now that her boy had left her thus inexplicably, without a kiss, the mother, in her aching and angry heart, laid all the blame upon the girl, whose very existence she had always resented. Over and over, as she sat there by the little oil lamp, rocking fiercely, the open letter in her lap, she told herself that her boy would never have gone off in that mad, cruel fashion, unless he had found out something bad about Luelly Warden. She knew Jim’s love for the girl, little as she sympathized with it. And now, forgiving Jim’s treatment of herself, she turned all her bitterness against the unhappy Luella. Hour after hour she sat rocking beside the lamp, holding the letter clutched in her worn, big-knuckled fingers, listening to the moaning rush of the ebb as it fled seaward within a furlong of her doors, and picturing to herself the flight of the G. G. Goodridge under the starlit night. When the first of the dawn, spreading over Tantramar, began to pale the little yellow flame of her lamp, she got up briskly, pressed out the crumpled paper with care, folded it away under some lace kerchiefs and Sunday bows in her top bureau drawer, turned out the light, and muttered inaudibly a harsh imprecation upon the girl. Then, methodically removing her neckerchief, her stout shoes, and the stiff black silk dress which she had put on in Jim’s honour, she threw herself down on the bed without undressing. Such an irregularity was, for her, a mark of the gravest emotional disturbance. So bitter was her heart in its loneliness and resentment that if she could have seen Luella at that hour, white-lipped and dry-eyed with anguish, lying with her face to the wall in the little room overlooking the “Bito,” she would have exulted in every fibre over the girl’s voiceless despair.

It was just two years ago that very night that Jim Calder, then a sturdy and tan-faced stripling of eighteen, lately home from a voyage to the West Indies, had brought Luella to his mother in a glow of triumph and announced their betrothal. Never till that moment had Mrs. Calder had aught but good-will for Luella. She knew her to be modest, well-mannered, self-respecting, and of good countryside stock, her father having been owner and captain of a two-topmast schooner which traded profitably between the Fundy ports and Boston. Now, however, she saw in this seventeen-year-old girl, with her tall, straight, vigorous form, her mane of burnished flax, like cool, pale gold, her steady, grave, porcelain-blue eyes under deep brows, her broad forehead and clean-cut features of a fairness which all the marsh-winds and unshadowed suns could but touch to cream, her somewhat large and very red mouth under whose childishness was already beginning to show a suggestion of womanly strength, tenderness, and passion,—in this girl she saw a crafty woman, who had succeeded in ensnaring her boy. She looked slowly from Luella to Jim. She studied his frank, young face, with its wholesome, ruddy tan, the mouth ardent and positive, the eyes of light hazel, honest, fearless, kind,—the hair a dark warm brown, thick, elastic, half-curling, and short. She eyed his straight figure, broad in the shoulder, narrow in the hips, of middle stature, and suggesting both strength and alertness. A hot flush of resentment went over her, at the thought that another woman should supersede her, by ever so little, in the heart of her beautiful son. She thought, however, that this emotion was only a proper anger against a designing woman, who had taken advantage of a boy’s ignorance. She looked Luella straight in the eyes, and said, coldly:

“I reckon Jim’s a leetle young to be thinking about a wife. He’s a leetle mite young, too, maybe, to be knowing his own mind.”

Jim stared at her in amazement so deep that there was, at first, no room for indignation; but Luella flushed up to the roots of her fair hair. At first her lips quivered childishly, and her blue eyes filled. Then the underlying strength of her nature asserted itself. Her mouth steadied, and her eyes steadied as they answered gravely the elder woman’s challenge. She was about to make a severe retort, when a swift glance at Jim’s face showed her that some sort of storm was rising through his confusion, and about to break in words which his mother might find it hard to forget. With an inspiration of wisdom beyond her years she intervened.

“I’m so sorry you are not pleased, Mrs. Calder,” she said, modestly. “But indeed, I’ll try to please you and make you like me. I can’t help loving Jim.”

Mrs. Calder, too, had noted the danger-signal in the boy’s face, and fearless though she was, she heeded it. Moreover, she felt suddenly ashamed of herself, and reproachful for having driven the joy from Jim’s face. She held out her hand, and forced a smile of frosty welcome to her austere lips.

“Forgive my ugliness, Luelly!” she said. “An’ you, too, Jim. I was right ugly to talk that way, an’ you two young things so happy!”

Luella accepted the proffered hand warmly, with secret triumph. But Jim was not yet conciliated.

“If you’ve got anything to say agin Luella, mother, out with it, right now!” he demanded, with a little stumbling in his speech from the stress of his wrath. “I know my own mind ’bout as well as most folks, I reckon. An’ I’m goin’ to marry Luella the day I get to be mate.”

“No, Jim, I hain’t a word to say agin Luella,—not a word,” his mother hastened to protest. “So far’s I know, ther’ ain’t a finer nor a cleverer girl in Westcock parish. I reckon I was jest ugly.” And she held out a deprecating hand to Jim.

The boy looked at her in silence for a moment, then at Luella’s serene face. The anger died from his mouth and eyes as a cloud melts suddenly to let the sun shine through, and stepping forward impetuously, he flung his arms about his mother’s unbending shoulders. As he kissed her she thrust her hands into his thick, warm hair and squeezed his head against her cheek.

“Ye’ll have to be powerful good to Jim, Luella,” she said, with an attempt at graciousness. “He’s awful tender-hearted, but he’s got a leetle mite of his old mother’s ugly temper. Ye’ll have to be nice to him, child!”

Not knowing just what she had better reply to this, Luella smiled her assent, and tied superfluous knots in the strings of the sunbonnet which hung back from her firm white throat. Jim, however, was hugely relieved,—rejoicing more at the clearing of the storm than he could have rejoiced had there been no storm to clear. Seizing the two women, one in each arm, he drew them close to him and to each other, kissed them both laughingly on the neck, and cried, “Oh, I know you two’re goin’ to git to likin’ each other such a lot, my nose’ll be out of joint with both of you before I git back from my next voyage.”

This sanguine dream of his, however, was far from coming true.

For a long time both women tried honestly enough to like each other. But Luella, finding it impossible to quite believe in the elder woman’s good-will, was ever ready to suspect covert censure, to interpret the blunders of a self-centred and crude nature as intentional slight. Mrs. Calder, on her part, made what she really believed to be a sincere attempt to discover that charm and goodness in the girl which Jim found in her so abundantly. At every such attempt, however, she would stumble upon something which, to her hopelessly prejudiced eyes, was evidence of the girl’s scheming craft. There was little that she could not so twist, in the unhappy perversity of her vision. And thus, in her own teeth, as it were, she forced herself to the unalterable conviction that Luella was unworthy. She had tried her best, she believed. And being in very truth a woman of conscientious scruple, most unwilling to be caught at any time beyond shelter of her own self-commendation, she honestly grieved over what she called Jim’s infatuation, and professed to bewail Luella’s unworth. Against this attitude Luella could not long contend. When she came to realize it fully, she broke down in girlish anger and misery, wildly resentful of an injustice which she had no power or experience to resist. Pride came presently to her rescue, however, with a certain poise and reticence which acted upon the elder woman like a cutting retort; and before Jim had been three months away his mother and his sweetheart were passing each other, at church or on the country road, without so much as a glance of recognition.

In all this Luella had Westcock on her side, which was a continual balm to her injured heart. Every one knew that she was the victim of the bitter jealousy of a mother,—and of a very unreasoning mother. Luella was not exactly popular,—she was too reserved and too distinguished-looking for that; but she was highly thought of. On the other hand, all the village knew that Mrs. Calder was “hard to get along with,” besides being always critical in her attitude toward everything and every one not cut precisely to her own pattern. To be sure, Jim was not cut to her pattern, but rather to the very unlike and very winning one of his long-dead father. Folk said that his mother forgave him that, because she realized she had done the cutting herself and could see no flaw in her own handiwork. When Mary Dugan, at the sewing-circle, declared that if Jim had picked an angel out of heaven, Mrs. Calder would have thought her a Delilah, all Westcock said, “That’s so!” And many were the benevolent efforts made to egg Luella on to a proper system of retaliatory back-biting, in the interests of general conversation. But Luella was wise enough to entrench herself in silence, and in thoughts of Jim.

This self-control on the part of a mere child like Luella passed with most of the good Westcock folk as overmeekness, a lack of proper spirit. But in the eyes of the rector, who saw the steadfast stuff that went to her make-up, she found the fullest understanding. He said not a word to her on the subject; but his kind, comprehending glance over and over again came to her reassurance when her courage was near breaking. There was something in that look which always made her not only stronger, but more tolerant and forgiving, and convinced her that things would all come right in the end. Once or twice, having a faith that he could straighten out any difficulty, she thought of begging him to say a word to Mrs. Calder. But she reminded herself that this would be a presumption on her part, and with a flush of shame she forbore. It was clear that the rector knew, and therefore would speak if he thought best.

Being a shrewd as well as a tender watcher of the human heart, the rector did not think best to speak to Mrs. Calder about Luella. He was apt to be impatient of self-righteousness beyond other sins; and he thought Mrs. Calder self-righteous. Moreover, she was not of his flock, though Jim was. She was an old-school Presbyterian, who had joined the Calvinist Baptists because there were no other Presbyterians in the Tantramar country. She yielded the rector a rather grudging respect, but at the same time strongly disapproved of his lack of harshness toward sinners. She openly charged him with a readiness to believe that almost any sinner, if not all sinners, might achieve salvation,—a belief which, in her eyes, was nothing less than a damnable and damning heresy. Knowing that she held this attitude toward him, the rector felt that it would only make matters worse if he should attempt to soften her toward Luella. He read accurately the set of that long jaw and positive, long, uncompromising upper lip. Therefore he contented himself with being very kind and cordial toward her, and sympathizing with all her little troubles, in the hope of ultimately softening her heart with the warmth of his own great-hearted, patient humanity.

When Jim came home again, some six months after his betrothal to Luella, he was at first furious, then desperately distressed over the situation. Devoted though he was to his mother, he understood her peculiarities; and it needed only her own statement of her case to convince him how hopelessly she was in the wrong. Luella, on the other hand, refrained from justifying herself to him—and had the reward of seeing herself justified in his eyes without a word. Thereafter, he adopted the rector’s tactics of strict non-interference, on the assumption that if time and patience could not soften his mother’s heart, nothing could. He resumed his wonted, irresistible sunniness, acted as if nothing was the matter, and managed to keep not only Luella but his mother as well in a state of equanimity throughout his visit.