Renton's Mother

I

RENTON’S mother stood with one slim hand on the library mantel. Her eyes, which had been fixed on the portrait over it, were narrowed now, looking speculatively into the fire. Renton must be got away to New York. That was clear to her.

Though Renton’s mother had idealized her husband; had consulted him on every question, large and small, and had abided by his decision, yet, after his death — and Renton’s father died when Renton was a baby — she suddenly developed a genius, or what may have been previously a latent longing, for management. She had arranged and planned her son’s life entirely. She had brought him up to obey her and respect her; yet she gave few commands, one might say none.

The boy grew up sensitive and appreciative of her every wish, swayed by her unspoken desires. You have seen a high-strung horse trained so sensitively; such a horse is called ‘bridlewise.’ A mere turn of the bridle, a mere slight touch of the lines on one shoulder or the other, and it goes into the gait desired. It was a little like that. You can imagine with what nicety and firmness of hand, with what kindness and gentleness of touch, such a thing is accomplished.

His boyhood safely past, his mother had arranged for him, on his return from the university, what had the appearance of a chance meeting with the girl she had had in mind for him ever since he was a slender shock-headed lad of fourteen. The result was what she had hoped, and was indeed hardly to be wondered at. It might be unfair to say that Renton’s mother made the match, because the girl’s beauty itself might so easily have made it. There was a quiet fawnlike loveliness about her, something aristocratic that matched Renton’s own fine high-bred air.

Somewhat later, when he had been engaged a little more than a week, Renton came to his mother one moonlight night and broke to her the news of this thing. Well, she had planned for it during some eight years, and had worked for it definitely, though unsuspected, for some five months or more, but she took it exactly as he gave it to her — as a piece of news that she, as his mother, was entitled to know. He hoped she would understand and approve, but in any case, in matters of this kind a man must be his own master, his own judge, utterly.

Renton’s mother made no show of surprise, made no confession that this had long been her wish; instead, she kissed him sedately on the lips, with her two slim, condescending hands hollowed about his fine head.

‘In this, as in other things, my son, I trust you — as you know — wholly. You are right. There is one choice of all others that should be a man’s own. I pray God may bless you both.’

When he was gone to his room to dream dreams of this girl of his choice, Renton’s mother sat in the cretonne chair in her bedroom looking out ahead of her. She was no longer first in her son’s affections. But she had met that thought and disposed of it months before. Her thoughts now were glad but careful ones of future years. She was planning already how Renton’s children should be raised.

Another woman might have spent some moments on her knees in humble gratitude that her son had selected for a wife a girl of the type of this girl whom Renton loved. Not so Renton’s mother. She was a devout woman, but she believed in thanking God for causes, not for effects. So, while Renton lay sleepless, with white fire licking through his veins, and the devotion of a modern knight of the grail coursing through him, she knelt and thanked the Lord that he had given her the brain and judgment to direct her son’s life as she had directed it; to make him the clean, sensitive fellow she had made him; and that she had been able to direct him to the love of this woman.

She tasted a little the joy of creation. She had made him what he was. In this world of her making — his world — she had said, ‘Let there be light!’ and there was light. She had separated the sea and the land for him; set the sun and the moon in his heavens. While he slept, as it were, she had given him a woman for his mate. It was creation, — on a small scale if you like, but it was creation. It had taken her not seven days, but twenty-eight years, altogether, of days and nights, to accomplish it; but it was hers, the work of her hands. That Renton knew nothing of all this, — believed himself to be the master of the beasts and birds of his fields, and of that paradise in which he found himself, —what was that to Renton’s mother? Perhaps that was a part of her plan, too. If she could not afford generosity, who indeed could?

The engagement was like many another. Renton’s mother was gracious, tactful, and the girl bent easily to her, like a young birch in a warm south wind. If, at times, it seemed to the older woman that this girl carried about her an imperturbable mystery, a kind of sacredness of possession — yet Renton’s mother turned to her own blessings, reassured. Had she not twenty-eight years, the making of his world, and all motherhood, the start of this girl? The girl would be the mother of other men, perhaps (she hoped so, a marriage without children she had always dreaded for him), but never his mother; that was her own part, and hers only, in the whole wide world.

When, after six months of unspoiled joy, the girl died, suddenly, Renton’s mother found herself with new problems to face; perhaps, an entire world to reconstruct. The sea and land, which she had separated for him, threatened to rush together again. Would the sun and moon keep their places in his heavens? She watched apprehensively the swaying of her system. But after one night of passionate, blinding storm that rocked the faith she had taught him, and overthrew the poise in which she had trained him, Renton met the grief as she had planned and believed all her life he must and would meet grief when it came — quietly and with reserve. The sun and moon would resume their duties.

Even the day that the girl’s portrait (for Edith Carter had left to Renton a portrait of herself, in a brief will she had made) came to take its place with them, Renton was as calm as his mother had all her life planned he should be in great crises. He himself superintended its placing above the mantel in the library. Only, that evening he insisted on staying late in the library, and for the first time it was he, not his mother, who was the last to go upstairs for the night.

From then on, his sorrow was a closed door to her. She knew that he suffered in some inner room, yet she never once laid a hand on the latch; though how often she stood outside the door, one hand pressed against her cheek, listening, it would be difficult to say. Renton’s mother could wait. When the time came, and it would, he would speak to her. Nothing of this sort must be hurried.

After five months, she came one night, later than usual, to bid him good-night, and found him seated by the fire below the portrait, his head in his hands. That he did not look up as she entered, nor attempt to hide his mood from her, gave her rights and privileges. For the first time the door to his sorrow stood open ever so little. She was quick to note it. She had been waiting for just this moment for a long, long time. She laid her hand and arm about his shoulder. When he raised his face it was haggard and looked ill.

‘Edith has been here,’ he said, without preliminary, ‘more real than ever, to-night. I can feel the touch of her hand when she comes; and now and then, — never at my solicitation, but of her own will, — now and then, when for her sake I have conquered something, — have done what I believed to be right, —she rewards me: she kisses me on the lips.’

His mother had not reckoned on this. For a moment she said nothing, only kept her arm about him, protectingly. At last she looked out ahead of her, trying to speak smoothly: —

‘We must get it clear in our minds, Renton, just what service to her is best, just what service is the service she herself would wish. That you should remember her — keenly, keenly, yes, that is normal, natural, and as it should be. But that she should seem to you actually present — It is in that direction that men’s minds’ — She knew suddenly that she had taken a false step. To accuse him of a kind of madness— Besides, was it madness? She had never settled for herself the question of realities. She believed dimly in certain spiritual presences, which ’exerted certain influences.’ She felt about for the right words. Then she put one hand on his head. ‘I am not out of sympathy with you, you understand that.’

He rose away from her arm, and stood looking at the portrait.

‘Her hand leads or detains me, will lead or detain me all my life,’ he said. ‘Not the memory of her, you understand, but her hand, as actually on me as it is there on the chair in the portrait, where she stands. I used to be afraid at first that she might have gone beyond reach; but now I know that she has not; that she will not. She can hear as well as you or I. She will not leave me, thank God! As to its being a morbid fancy, do you think she would not know that and leave me if it were? Do you think she, most of all in heaven and earth, has not my good and happiness at heart? I can trust myself in her hands. In her hands!’

His mother was behind him now without a word. His voice broke into the full rhythm of verses she knew and distrusted. She had never believed it good for a man to read Rossetti. For sensual beauty in verse, Keats and Tennyson and Shelley went far enough. It came to her somewhat as a shock that he not only had read these verses, but that he recited them with so much familiarity, almost as though they had been his own. Doubtless he and Edith Carter had read them and enjoyed them together.

He raised his head listeningly; —

When at last he turned to his mother the intense mood had slipped from him somewhat. She stood, her closed hand against her cheek, dragging her lip down a little, that was all.

‘You need have no fear,’ he said, turning to her, ‘I am sound in mind. I am like other men, only different in this, that I have a dead girl to whom my life is dedicated. I might have gone to the devil like many another man, who has had all the light and purpose taken from his life. But you can trust me. Edith Carter’s hand is on me; as long as that is so I am safe, and shall be worthy of her.’

So it was that Renton’s mother knew clearly and immediately that he must be got away to other surroundings. She who had always directed his life must rid him now of this influence which threatened her plans for him. She had a deep respect for occult powers. Like most of us, she did not know how much she believed in the dead; but this much she knew: Edith Carter, or were it only the memory of her, had vital power in her son’s life, and this was to be reckoned with and broken. The hand that was on him, whether it was a mere remembered thing, or the actual touch of the dead, if you wished to go so far, — she did not, mind you, — was to be loosened, that was all. How strong the influence of memory might be, she had hardly dreamed till now, nor how potent the presence of the remembered dead. Yet she was not discouraged.

To another woman this influence in Renton’s life might have seemed as it seemed to Renton, a thing beneficent, protecting. Not so to Renton’s mother. She had not planned for him a complete life, with wife and friends and children of his own, to have that plan frustrated now by a fancied memoried thing, the hand of some dead girl, some phantom on his shoulder.

After this, she used often to stop before the portrait of Edith Carter when Renton was not about. She meant to know Edith Carter better, as Renton himself knew her; to understand Edith Carter’s memoried power over Renton — the better to cope with it. She stopped day after day, again and again, before the mantel, and looked into the sensitive, melancholy face of the portrait.

The girl might have been twentytwo, perhaps more; the portrait did not tell accurately, not more than portraits ever do. In pose it was as though, leaving the room, she had been stopped by some question, had paused and turned to answer. The head and face, singularly beautiful, were lifted just a little.

It was, perhaps, most of all the line of neck sweeping into the shoulder and up into the mass of hair, which gave the slender figure its patrician grace. At one moment it was as though the girl would linger still a little while; at another it was as though, detained only by a word, Edith Carter did not mean to stay.

II

Though it was certainly not as adviser that Renton’s mother had asked Cousin Benjamin to come to Brent Hall, yet, owing to the wording of her letter, he believed himself to have come in that capacity, and was no little flattered and alarmed by the distinction. Cousin Benjamin was one of those inadequate souls who believe themselves particularly adequate, and especially adapted to the giving of advice.

He had been at Brent Hall some days. He came into the room one afternoon and found Renton’s mother in front of the portrait. He stood beside her, silent, a moment. Then he drew his handkerchief across his forehead, as though he were warm, spread his hands to the blaze as though he were cold, shivered his shoulders straight, and cleared his throat.

‘I tell you, Cousin Matilda, it ’s suicidal for him to keep that thing before him. It ought to be got clear out of his sight. Why, I had a poor photograph, just a poor photograph, mind you, of Molly, — my youngest girl, you know, — taken with her hair down her back. It had the trick of her eyes — that little twinkle in the left one — (you never saw Molly, though)—well, I tell you, I put the thing away; yes, I did; for good and all. “ Molly’s gone,” I said; “she’s happier where she is. She’s with her nm,” I said, and I packed the thing away. I don’t think I tore it up, but I should if I ever came across it again; ’pon my soul, I should.’

‘Oh, no, you would n’t,’ Renton’s mother said quietly. ‘You can’t tear up a thing of that kind. I fed on a photograph once myself. You actually feed on them, you know.’ She narrowed her eyes with the memory. ‘Then you make up your mind not to look again. Then you get so hungry, sickening hungry for the reality, that you look again; and there is the actual person looking out at you. It is that way with Renton and this portrait.’

He looked uncomfortable, and took a side glance at her. She was forever meeting him at corners with some shadowy truth which his practical brain had dodged for years. He had had exactly that experience, but had never admitted it. Now he ignored her words.

‘Why should I mince matters,’ he said. He spoke with noticeable gentleness, laying the matter smooth on the palm of one hand with the forefinger of the other. ‘My advice is — get. the boy off as soon as possible to New York.’

He swept one hand off to the right decisively, to indicate that city and have done with it. Then he jerked his shoulders, ran his hands a little farther through his cuffs, brought his elbows in tight to his sides, and began laying the matter smooth again on his palm, like a man about to say something vital and important.

‘Get him off to New York; then — have something happen to that.' He nodded once toward Edith Carter.

Renton’s mother picked an imaginary something from her sleeve, and rid her thumb and forefinger of it very deliberately.

‘I am not quite sure yet what we must do. If the girl were here I should appeal to her. Her influence must be broken. If she could be got to take her hand off him. And yet — he protests it is just she who saves him from himself.’ She narrowed her eyes again.

Cousin Benjamin jerked his head back and his stomach out and shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyebrows and brought them down nervously, then up, then down again.

‘Of course— if you consider him a fit judge! If you mean to talk to me about dead women as though, as though — she’s dead how many months, you say? Seven. Yes, seven months. Why should we mince matters? My dear Cousin Matilda, I do declare and profess, you talk as though she were outside the door yonder!’

His hand pointed to the door. His knees bent a little in enthusiasm for his argument, then they straightened, his body swayed back somewhat and then regained its balance, as though the matter were settled.

Renton’s mother seemed pausing wisely. She had been looking into the fire a long time.

‘To him she is much nearer than that.’ There was silence a moment; then she spoke very deliberately. ‘He tells me this himself. It is because of her that he lives as he lives. You have only to look in the boy’s face to know. He is dedicated to her, body and soul.’

Cousin Benjamin took up the argument again, like a man vindicated.

‘Just what I tell you. Just what I tell you! Get him away. Get him away!’ He held his hands out as though to show her the matter once and for all, clean and plain, and for the last time. ‘Is he to go on like this? Tell me, is he?’

Renton’s mother put her forehead against her hand on the mantel, and looked into the fire, like a woman who has time, much time, to think. Cousin Benjamin filled the pause with his handkerchief, for which he found a hundred nervous uses in and out of his coat-tails and around his collar.

‘When I think of the boy after I am gone’ — Her speech went slowly as though impeded by some heavy thought.

‘That’s it! ’ Cousin Benjamin felt of his coat-tails again, sent his arms shooting through his cuffs a little, with a jerk, to gain courage; wiped his fingers of some imaginary something. ‘That’s it, exactly!’

‘Alone,’ she continued, uninterrupted, ‘with no woman in his life’ — she narrowed her eyes the better to scan the bare waste of it, — ‘no physical realities; with no children, — then I feel it is a matter I cannot leave to God. I must manage it myself, you see.’ There was something proudly insistent, yet explanatory in her tone. — ‘I am his mother.’ She smiled and added, — not to Cousin Benjamin, not to any one; a mere fact stated — and she managed to state it without, irreverence — only there was something a little weary and condescending in her voice,— ‘Even God had a mother.’

Cousin Benjamin took another sidewise look at her, then began again on his argument: —

‘Look at his life as it is; and look at what it ought to be. I can see him in me mind’s eye: a cosy room,’ — he closed one eye as though the better to see,— ‘at the other side of the table a real flesh-and-blood woman. Roses in her cheeks, lace and things round her neck, and sewing on little frocks by the light of the evening lamp. Children playing around (the crowning blessing of love!). What if death does come. Suppose even the second woman dies! He’s got real things left. He is forced to live for the future of his children.’

He paused, and with a few nervous gestures got ready for the rest of his argument.

‘Take a girl like Louise Henry, for instance. I was telling you about her — She’s the kind! — real and warm as a bird. Have n’t you ever held a warm bird in your hand?’ He drew back as she shuddered. He remembered now she had always been afraid of birds.

‘ ’Fraid of ’em? Well, some women are. Louise Henry is like that, though. I tell you, get him away! Then look at that girl as nothing but paint and canvas and get her away. Cut her out of the frame. Lord! burn her up!’

‘I mean to get him away, of course,’ she said quietly. ‘It was for that I asked you to come. I wanted you to tell me very exactly about New York.’

It took Cousin Benjamin a moment to right himself. All his argument had been unnecessary, then; a kind of useless extravagance. He took a quick, half-baffled, half-disconcerted look at her. Her eyes were on the portrait. He took a look at it, too.

Edith Carter’s eyes met theirs with the same sureness, the same melancholy. The pause in her going seemed very slight . The pose was a strangely living one. She seemed almost on the point of departure.

There was a step outside. The door into the hall opened and Renton came in. For a moment no one spoke. There was among them the unbroken chill of the inopportune moment. Then Renton threw his whip and riding-cap and gloves on the table.

‘It is snowing,’ he said, with the air of a man who speaks for courtesy’s sake.

III

From New York Renton wrote often; but the letters which Renton’s mother opened first, and not always with steady fingers, were addressed in the large flowing hand of Cousin Benjamin. They were, oftenest, short; sometimes mere bulletins; but she read and reread them,and sometimes carried them in her bosom. A less sensitive woman would have read them less often; but to Renton’s mother there was much to be got out of them, even at a tenth reading.

To most people those days at Brent Hall might have seemed — would have been — killingly void. To Renton’s mother they were full to the brim. Every detail of the plan for her son was to be thought out.

As yet no very great encouragement had come through the letters she received. Cousin Benjamin’s were sanguine, but reported Renton as reserved, untouched, so far; yet he took a bit of interest, too, in the city. ‘Off to himself a great deal, — but Rome was not built in a day, my dear Cousin Matilda.’ She wearied of the reiteration of a tiresome sentiment which she knew as well as, or better than, most people.

One rlav, pausing before the portrait, she spoke to it suddenly, softly: — ‘Why don’t you help me, my dear? It is for his good.’

After that, for several days she avoided the library altogether; then afterwards for several days more, whenever she entered, she opened the door half apologetically. About ten days later, as she was leaving the room for the night, she paused and spoke once again to the portrait, almost pleadingly this time: —

‘Let him see the world a little, my girl, — it is every man’s right; and other women — other women than yourself.’

One day, about three weeks after this, her cheeks flew a flag all day. For the first time Renton’s letters mentioned Louise Henry, though she knew, from Cousin Benjamin’s letters, how long a time before that Renton had met her.

The sentence ran, ‘She is a distant cousin of the Ratcliffes, and beautiful like them. You would like her. She has good blood — the thing you make such a point of. She is patrician. She has the clear look in between the eyes that comes with nothing else, and the easy grace and the lofty gentleness.’

Her heart quickened somewhat as she read, and re-read, this sentence many times. She glanced at the portrait. Edith Carter, meeting her look, was patrician, too,—the clear look between the eyes, the lofty gentleness, — Renton’s entire description was there. Not that the women were alike, exactly, but in essentials, in essentials, she told herself. Then she looked at the matter more closely. Was the likeness an encouraging or a discouraging thing? Might not Louise Henry only remind him of Edith Carter?

So the flag fluttered and drooped, fluttered and drooped again, in her cheeks all day.

She sat longer than usual in front of the library fire that evening, until the shadows had crept up around the portrait. She rose at last and peered through these shadows at the girl’s face.

‘I wish,’ she said at last, — she looked about her to make sure no one was near to overhear, — ‘ I wish you would think of his good as I do. Think it over, my dear; I don’t ask you to decide at once.’

The winter passed slowly. Then some indescribable ennui settled down beside Renton’s mother; such unbearable tedium as comes with waiting for a letter that never arrives. Not that letters lacked, but Louise Henry was not mentioned in them; scarcely even in Cousin Benjamin’s now, except very occasionally, very trivially.

Cousin Benjamin was vague, almost equivocal, full of a persistent cheer that might, however, mean one thing, might mean another. As to Renton’s letters — although studiously regular, they lacked fire and intimacy.

Renton’s mother considered whether it might not be best for her to go to New York, herself. Once on the ground she could judge better. She wrote to Cousin Benjamin. In return she had this letter, much underlined: —

‘If he sees you it may perhaps bring him right back to Edith Carter, who I have reason to think he is forgetting. Not altogether, you understand. One cannot expect that. Rome was not built in a day. In any case he is seeing life and real people; not dead ones. He has taken to going to the theatre of late. My opinion is you must let him alone; let him take his own course. Even if he chose to go in for wine and fast women, I ’d still say, let him alone. Plenty of men go in for that sort of thing. It’s real, anyway. I ’d rather have him with a flesh-and-blood woman—I wouldn’t care who — than to have him spending his days and nights with a phantom.’

Yes, she believed in leaving him alone, certainly; else why should she be here and he there. But there was the question how far one dared trust Providence.

She wrote to Cousin Benjamin in her neat, somewhat illegible hand, —

‘I have decided not to go to New York. As to wine and fast women, I thank God, who permitted me to give him better ideals.’

Later she wrote, —

‘In one of your former letters, you spoke vaguely of a great variety of classes of women in New York, for a man to choose from. One of his own class, exactly, is what I would wish for him. Not having seen Louise Henry, I cannot tell. But I shall drive to Charlottesville when the roads are passable, to see the Ratcliffes, who know her, and will write you then. Tell me frankly, when you write, if she cares for my boy.’

If she did not care, then the path was clear to Renton’s mother, she would go to New York — and handle the matter herself. The girl must be got to care. Girls — beautiful ones especially — rarely know their own minds. Youth and beauty flaunt, and presume on good fortune, like daffodils in the first warm breezes of March. Louise Henry would thank her later.

In reply, however, Renton’s mother had this: —

‘Yes, the girl does care. Why should I mince matters? There’s no doubt in my mind, not a particle. Not breaking her heart, she is n’t that kind — but cares’ (three times underscored). ‘Let him take his time, though. Rome was n’t built in a day. After all you can’t tell. He has n’t found himself yet.’

By-and-by she wrote, —

‘I have been to Charlottesville. I have seen Louise Henry’s photograph. The oldest Ratcliffe girl has one. She has a beautiful face. I am very pleased with it.’

In reply came this: —

‘Louise Henry is the girl, exactly, to be his wife, and the mother of his children. There’s only one kind of woman for that. The trouble is — he is n’t free just now to see her for the stunning fine girl she is. That’s the point. You used to speak of Edith Carter having her hand on him. Well, he is being held fast. What he needs is to be free. You can’t run the universe— more’s the pity. If you could, I’d say, “Hands off!” that’s all. I’d have him free, scot-free, twenty-four hours from the hand of any woman, alive or dead. When he woke from the unreal things that spoil his life — maybe he’d wake to Louise Henry. Maybe he’d see her as the girl to fulfill his manhood. I don’t know. The point is — I say — hands off! The question is, how. You’ve just got to leave the thing to chance. Rome was n’t built in a day. — I know I say it often; but it’s true.’

Here was a letter, indeed! Renton’s mother read it and re-read it. It was by all odds the least satisfactory letter Cousin Benjamin had written her. It was full of vague things that you might interpret this way or that. He practically owned himself defeated, yet he admitted that she was right about Louise Henry. She ran her eye over the lines again. ‘You’ve just got to leave the thing to chance.’ She pressed her thin lips together. That might be the solution for Cousin Benjamin, scarcely for the mother of Renton. To chance! Scarcely! There were several things she might do. She might go to him at once — but no, that might bring the home associations about him more strongly than ever. She would write a letter to him, such a letter as would put a duty on him, stronger than any duty in his life.

Throughout the day she said over sentences that might sway him; weighed sentiments which might bend him; thoughts or phrases that might stir him. It was no light matter, nor to be done with haste or ease. Late in the afternoon she began writing. After supper she went back to the library table. Every now and then she would stop, with her head on one side, her closed hand on her cheek, to re-read, her lips moving without sound. In almost every case the sheet was discarded for a fresh one.

At last she gathered up all the papers slowly, tore them this way and that, and put them in the fire.

A dry branch tapped against the north window. She paused a moment to look in that direction through the shadows; then she seated herself uneasily before the fire, on the edge of her chair. Once she glanced up at the portrait; once she looked over her shoulder. At last she got up and, with another quick glance around the room, went to the portrait and looked at it. Her lips moved. The words were just audible.

‘I don’t know how to deal with you,’ she said softly, ‘ I wish you were living. I wish you could hear me.’

The portrait’s eyes met hers, as they met all things, with heavy-lidded, halfsad gaze.

Renton’s mother turned and walked away a little, with her head bent. Then she stopped and came back and laid one hand on the mantel.

‘I think you are living somewhere,’ she said softly. ‘You have heard me, and you do hear me now. You must.’ She put her other hand on the mantel. They were powerful slim hands, with delicately blue veins on them. ‘It is this way, my dear. You love him and I love him. We are the two who love him longest and best. But now there is another woman. It appears she loves him, too. If he, in turn, should love her, you would, of course, no longer be his first thought. It would be with you as it was with me when he began to care for you. But don’t think of yourself. I did not.’ She paused and looked away and spoke, not to the girl, but to herself. ‘Why, I am his mother, — and you, my girl, are only his first love.’ Her glance came back. ‘Besides, it is a woman’s place to forget herself for the man she loves. When I chose you for him a long time ago, I chose you because of that. I said, “ She will be a worthy wife, a girl who can lose her interests in his; a girl who will gladly go into the valley of death to bear him a child, — who would give up her life gladly, gladly for him, if occasion called.” Now think a minute. Can’t you do this thing I ask of you? — Can’t you give him up? — For his good, you know. This other woman loves him. She will bring him the real things of life. She will bear him children, — flesh and blood.’

She looked about her, conscious of having reached the most difficult point. When she turned back from the shadows to the portrait, it was cautiously, as though she were afraid to meet the heavy-lidded eyes.

The same dead branch tapped against the window, warningly. She stopped to listen, and it stopped. She turned to the portrait once more. ‘Let him be free, Edith Carter; let him be free to go to the woman who draws him. Let him have a man’s part. You who profess to love him, take your hands off him to-night . Let him have a real woman of flesh and blood in his arms to-night, not you — not you. Loose him and let him go. I do not mean to be cruel. You will always be his first love; the sweetest of all his memories. He will turn to you many a time; you may even to the end be the lady of his soul. But this other woman’ —She was pleading now with a kind of cunning. ‘I only ask you, my dear, for twenty-four hours. After that — come back to his memory, if you like. I merely want to try the experiment, for his good. For his good, you know. You can still serve him, by sacrificing yourself in this matter. Think of his good. I am his mother. Go! Go!’She paused a moment. ‘Take away your white dead hand from him,’ she said. ‘Take it away, if you love him.’

There was absolute silence. Not even the little branch said anything. The flames in the grate had all died down; there were only red coals, — a bed of them. The shadows in the past quarter of an hour had crept slowly, cautiously, with innumerable little retreats, while the fire still flickered, closer to the grate. Once a little spent flame flared suddenly, and they leaped back softly behind the chairs and sofas and retreated to the corners. Then, as the flame died down, they approached again, soft-footed, formless things. They were crouched close to the hearth now as the glow in the grate died — and they laid unfelt hands on the skirt of the woman who stood before the portrait.

Renton’s mother turned her head slowly, very slowly, like one afraid to look over her shoulder. This thing, of talking to the dead, had wrought upon her imaginative nature. One gaunt hand, the one which wore its wedding ring, pressed her cheek heavily and drew down her lip at the corner. She faced the room, her head up, like one who has fears, yet, is not afraid. She made a step or two forward, then paused, then went to each window and pulled down each blind, sharply, softly. She went to the door leading into the hall. She did not once look toward the portrait. As she opened the door the little branch beat again insistently, as though it still had something to say. She paused, and lifted her head, a little as though daring it. It stopped. She stepped into the hall, pulled the door to softly after her, turned the key heavily in the lock. She made her way up the bare stairs in the dark, her gown slimping after her.

At the top of the landing she started and paused abruptly, one hand tense on the banister. There was a dull crash below stairs. It might have been the overturning of something in the library. The sound was gone quickly, and the silence stepped in softly again. She glided down the broad upper hall in the dark, toward her room, like a shadow in a dream, only the frightened flush-flushing of her skirt following her rapidly along the matting. She locked her door after her that night, as was not her custom.

IV

She did not go into the library to investigate. For two days the door to it remained locked. She was unwilling to meet the eyes of the portrait. There had been some sort of psychological reaction. She felt that she had done some absurd and morbid thing, something abnormal, which yet was so far real that she half believed in it. She avoided the portrait as she would have avoided a person, yet remembering perfectly, too, that it was only a portrait. She had placed the key to the library under her prayer-book, on the little table at her bed’s head.

She waited for the mail with a kind of feverish anxiety. A letter from Cousin Benjamin made her heart beat.

‘Mind you, I don’t say yet that it is advisable that you come. It may be. If I think so I will send for you.’

There was no word from Renton.— She turned over in her mind how she could touch up her black silk. She had a pride in being her best before Louise Henry. Not that one Virginia woman needs a silk dress in the presence of another; but a man’s mother —

Two days went by, and in these no letters. Then — She looked up suddenly, her needle poised. The station fly was rumbling up the driveway.

She put her sewing by with a little frantic hurried movement, rose and stood still, one hand on her breast. Was Renton returning? Had all her care been for naught?

The fly did not come up to the door. It stopped halfway, and Cousin Benjamin got down from it and walked toward the house.

She laid down her needle with a trembling hand, and went down the steps to the lower hall and opened the door and drew him in. Her face was between apprehension and pleasure.

‘You need me? You wish me to come at once?’ she said. ‘Why did you come?’

He rid himself of his overcoat, hung it on the hat-rack, and turned to the library.

‘No, not there,’she said; and crossed to the unused parlor. In it, she turned on him suddenly, with the fingers of one hand on her brooch.

‘Why did you come?’ — Then, as he did not answer, — ‘Is it good news?

Cousin Benjamin looked helpless, then he coughed.

‘No, — it is n’t good news; — er — why should we mince matters? It’s anything but good news. God help me. — It’s a sorry business.’

Her hand went up to her throat, like a knowing thing, and as though it might help her to speak.

‘He does not care for her? It is all useless? He is coming back with Edith Carter still in his heart.’ She nodded once toward the library door. ‘Is that what you came to tell me?'

Cousin Benjamin got out his handkerchief, drew it across his forehead; wadded it, and drew it across his forehead again. He was in great trouble, no doubt.

‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating, with the wadded handkerchief, a low armchair. He seated himself on a little spindle-legged chair opposite her. ’My dear Cousin Matilda, the ways of God are inscrutable. Nor you nor I can explain them.’

‘What do you mean to tell me?’ she said, almost a little hoarsely. ‘What is the worst that can have happened to him?’

‘I spoke to you of wine and women ’ —

She nodded.

’Well, I kept it from you. You seemed so sure of him right along. He had better ideals, you said. I thought he had, too. I thought he’d never get into that sort of thing. And yet, a man, even if he does not actually expect that kind of thing of another man, still knows it is likely to happen. — You see, I thought it was a phase only. Moreover, I remembered the Carter girl. I’m not sentimental, Lord, no! But somehow I thought she’d save him; the memory of her. I’d got it in my head she’d keep her hand on him; would n’t let him go, you know. Then, there was Louise Henry, too; I never gave up hoping he’d care about her. But Louise Henry, though she loved him, never had the power.’ He shook his head. ‘Never had the power. And the dead girl — I don’t know what happened to her. — You said she had a hand on him; that she kept him from himself. Well, she took her hand off him that one night. She must have let him go. He forgot her. She forgot him. Something got in his blood. I don’t know. — The other woman was beautiful, you see. He believed in her at first. They generally do. — You know Kipling’s “ Vampire ” ? ’

‘I do not know anything of Kipling’s,’ she said, with tense control. ‘Let me demand of you to tell me a plain story plainly.’

‘ Why should I mince matters! ’ The man spoke helplessly, and with effort. ‘I did not see the whole cause of it. I believe now, he tried to keep true to the best in himself, — to the dead girl yonder, if you like, — until the very last. Yes, I’m sure he tried. Then, two nights ago — I suppose the thing was hard. You know, — no, you don’t know, — how a man’s passion can rise suddenly and sweep him off his feet.’ He flung out one arm. ‘Maybe he wished to be strong — most men who have led his life— She was the sort of woman to lead a man on, and he never guessing it. — You didn’t bring him up right. You never warned him of the danger a man meets in his own passions. He did n’t know the world. He believed in women — all women. I don’t know what he went through. I only know your dead girl did not save him.’

The woman’s hands went up, supplicating, then quieted themselves, each in each, again.

‘Yes? And then?’ She waited, awfully.

‘Why should we mince matters! Two days ago — I was called up at three o’clock at night — by telephone. The woman — It was in her house — Why should we —’ He broke off abruptly. ‘I cannot go on’ — he said, rising.

Renton’s mother rose also. One hand still quieted the other tightly.

‘Why should you be a coward?’ she said softly. ‘Look at me. Why in heaven’s name should you be a coward? There are other things left in life after disgrace. Don’t you suppose that to a man’s wife — to a man’s mother — Do you suppose anything, anything matters to a man’s mother? Go on — It was in her house — What ? ’

‘That he was found’ —

‘Yes. — Go on.’

‘That he was found — dead.’

Some fearful light glowed up in her a moment; then she took a step and steadied herself with one hand against a chair; the other, tight-closed, was pressed against her cheek, dragging her lip down. It was easier for the man to speak now than to endure her silence, and he hurried on with his excuses.

‘I did not let you know. There was nothing to be done. I knew you were alone here. I feared you might — well, I did n’t know what you would do. I only knew I could save you two days knowledge, until I myself could explain. — It seemed merciful. — I could bring the poor boy back myself—’

He thought she would have cried out. Instead she slipped sidewise into her chair. Her voice when she spoke was not weak: —

‘It was by his own hand?’

Cousin Benjamin did not speak.

She put her face in her hands, and rocked herself slightly. ‘Ah!’ she said, letting her breath out softly, as though in pain. When she spoke her voice was low and hoarse; —

‘Oh, Cousin Benjamin, if you had not tried to direct things yourself, manage them yourself. What right had you?’ She stopped and looked out helplessly ahead of her, her hands drawn half down her face. ‘You should have sent for me, — for his mother.’

Cousin Benjamin got up and walked back and forth. When he turned, her face was in her hands again. She was murmuring Something softly to herself. A few moments later she rose and glided past him and up to her own room.

An hour or more passed before he saw her again. Before he was aware of her, she had glided into the hushed parlor and put her hand on his arm. Her face was haggard. In the other hand she held a key.

‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘We must open the library for him.’

They stood inside the doorway. The room was cold and dark, the blinds all down. In a peevish east wind the little bough tapped insistently against the north window — as though it had known all the while, had warned and warned repeatedly, and had been disregarded, and would call attention to that fact.

Cousin Benjamin and Renton’s mother did not hear or notice it. Before the empty fireplace, face forward, the portrait lay. The sharp corner of the iron fender had cut into it in its fall. Renton’s mother went to it, a few hurried steps; then, there was a hushed pause. Cousin Benjamin raised the portrait and steadied it, so that it leaned against the brasses of the fireplace. Renton’s mother stepped back from it and steadied herself with one hand on the table, the other, closed, pressed against her cheek.

The picture in its fall had struck the iron fender, and a dark gash cut it across — marring the face, part of the body, and one of the delicate hands.

Renton’s mother drew her eyes away at last and held out her hand to Cousin Benjamin.

‘Come away,’ she said.

They left the room with steps that tried not to be too hurried, and somewhat like children who dare not look back.

They did not speak of the portrait until late that night when Renton’s body lay in the unaccustomed parlor.

‘You will do with the picture what you think best,’ she said, in answer to Cousin Benjamin’s rather nervous question.

He waited until early daylight of the morning after the funeral. He would rather not have any one to give him advice in the matter. He kindled a fire in the empty fireplace, cut the marred picture from its frame, doubled it somewhat to fit the grate, laid the tongs against it to keep it from falling outward on the hearth, made sure it had caught fire, left the room, and held the door to by its knob for several minutes.

When he went back to make sure that all was safe, only the shadowy semblance of a burned thing lay in the grate, and fell into flaked ashes as he removed the tongs.

Two days later, Renton’s mother, one thin hand holding together a little worsted shawl, stood on the verandah, bidding Cousin Benjamin good-bye.

‘Tell Louise Henry that some time, some time I shall wish to see her. Not yet; by-and-by. Tell her I am glad she loved him.’

The rain beat in on the verandah in dreary gusts.

‘Go back, I beg of you! You will take cold!’

Cousin Benjamin pressed her hand again, put his hat on securely, with both hands, back and front; held his head sidewise a little against the beat of the wind, and hurried down the steps.

The station man, his head on one side also, already held open the door of the station fly. Cousin Benjamin entered. The door was banged to. The station man mounted, folded the skirts of his coat about him carefully, wrapped the lap-robe outside of these, sat down, took up the rains, shook them out a little.

The station fly moved off at a brisk trot. Cousin Benjamin leaned forward with his hat raised. Renton’s mother watched him drive away until the curve of the roadway hid the fly from view. Then she turned and went back into the empty house. From the window of the sitting-room where she often sat to sew, she could see the new-made grave. At her wish they had made it there, just at the foot of the lawn, where she could keep watch of it.