CHAPTER V.
MRS. MARKHAM'S VIEWS.
In the gathering twilight, in a parlor at the Markham mansion, sat Julia by the piano, resting her head on one hand, while with the other she brought little ripples of music from the keys; sometimes a medley, then single and prolonged notes, like heavy drops of water into a deep pool, and then a twinkling shower of melody. She was not sad, or pensive, or thoughtful; but in one of these quiet, sweet, and grave moods that come to deep natures—as a cloud passing over deep, still water enables one under its shadow to see into its depths. Her mother stood at an open window, inhaling the evening fragrance of flowers, and occasionally listening to the wild note of the mysterious whippoorwill, that came from a thicket of forest-trees in the distance.
The step of her father caught the ear of the young girl, who sprang up and ran towards him with eager face and sparkle of eye and voice.
"Oh, papa, the trunks came this afternoon, with the fashion-plates, and patterns, and everything, and all we girls—Nell, Kate Fisher, Miss Flora Walter, Pearlie, Ann, and all hands of us—have had a regular 'opening.' We went through with them all. The cottage bonnet is a love of a thing, and I am going to have it trimmed for myself. Sleeves are bigger than ever, and there were lots of splendid things!"
"And so Roberts has suited you all, for once, has he?" said the Judge, passing an arm around her small waist.
"Roberts! Faugh, he had nothing to do with it. Aunt Mary selected them all herself. They are the latest and newest from Paris—almost direct."
"Does that make them better?"
"Well, I don't know that there is anything in their coming from Paris, except that one likes to know that they come from the beginning-place of such things. Now if they had been made in Boston, New York, or Baltimore, one would not be certain they were like the right thing; and now we know they are the real thing itself. Do you understand?"
"Oh, yes—as well as a man may; and it is quite well put, too, and I don't know that I ever had so clear an idea of the value of things from a distance before."
"Well, you see, when a thing comes clear from the farthest off, we know there ain't anything beyond; and when it comes from the beginning, we don't take it second hand."
"I see; but why do you care, you girls in this far-off, rude region?"
"Mamma, do you hear that? Here is my own especial father, and your husband, asking me, a woman, and a very young woman too, for a reason."
"It is because you are a very young one that he expects you to give a reason. Perhaps he thinks you will not claim the privilege of our sex."
"Well, I won't. Now, then, Papa Judge, this is not a far-off, rude region, and you see that the French ladies want these styles and fashions, and all that; well, if they want them, we want them too."
"Now I don't quite see. How do you know they want them? Perhaps they are sent here because they don't want them; and, besides, why should a backwoods girl in Ohio want what a high-born lady in the French capital wants?"
"Because the American girl is a woman; and, besides, the court must hear and decide, and not ask absurd questions."
"And who is to see you in French millinery, here in the woods?"
"Oh, bless its foolish man's heart, that thinks a woman dresses to please its taste, when it hasn't any! We dress to please ourselves and plague each other—don't you know that? and we ain't pleased with poky home-made things."
"Julia! Mother," appealed the Judge, with uplifted hands, to Mrs.
Markham, "where did this young lady get her notions?"
"From the common source of woman's notions, as you call them, I presume—her feelings and fancies; and she is merely letting you see the workings of a woman's mind. We should all betray our sex a hundred times a day, if our blessed husbands and fathers had the power to understand us, I fear."
"And don't we understand you?"
"Of course you do, as well as you ever will. My dear husband, don't you also understand that if you fully comprehended us, or we you, we should lose interest in each other? that now we may be a perpetual revelation and study to each other, and so never become worn and common?"
"There, Papa Judge, are you satisfied—not with our arguments, but with us?"
"The man who was not would be unreasonable and—"
"Man-like," put in Julia. "Let me sing you my new song."
A piano was a novelty in Northern Ohio. Julia played with a real skill and expression, and her father, though no musician, loved to listen, and more to hear her sing, with her clear, strong, sweet voice, and so she played and sang her song.
When she had finished, "By the way," remarked her father, "I understand that our travelled young townsman, who has just returned from foreign parts, was at the post-office this afternoon, and perhaps you met him."
"Whom do you mean?" asked Julia.
"Your mother's pet, Bart Ridgeley."
"Now, papa, that is hardly kind, after what you said of him the other day. He is not mother's pet at all. She is only kind to him, as to everybody. Indeed, he don't seem to me like anybody's pet, to be patted and kept in-doors when it rains, and eat jellies, and be nice. I saw him at the store a moment; he was very civil, and merely asked after mamma, and went out."
"Did you ask him to call and see mamma?" asked her father a little gravely.
"Not at all. The truth is, papa, after what you said I could not ask him, and was hardly civil to him."
"Was it unpleasant to be hardly civil to him?"
"No; though I like to be civil to everybody. You know I have seen little of him since I came home, and when I have, he was sometimes silent and distant, and not like what he was before I went away."
"You find him improved in appearance and manners?" persisted the
Judge.
"Well, he was always good-looking, and had the way of a gentleman. Miss Walters seemed quite taken with him, and was surprised that he had grown up here in the woods."
Her father was silent a moment, and the subject was changed. Mrs. Markham was attentive to what was said of poor Bart, but made no comment at the time.
* * * * *
In their room, that night, in her sweet, serious way, she said to her husband, "Edward, I do not want to say a word in favor of Barton Ridgeley. I do not ask you to change your opinion of him or your course towards him; but I wish to ask if it is necessary to discuss him, especially with Julia?"
"Why?"
"Well, can it be productive of good? If you are mistaken in your estimate of him, you do him injustice, and in any event you will call her attention to him, and she may observe and study him; and almost any young woman who should do that might become interested in him."
"Do you think so? Men don't like him."
"Is that a reason why a woman would not?"
"Have you discovered any reason to think that Julia cares in the least for him?"
"Julia is young, and, like the women of our family, develops in these respects slowly; but, like the rest of us, she will have her own fancies some time, and you know"—with a still softer voice—"that one of them left a beautiful home, and a circle of love and luxury, to follow her heart into the woods."
"Yes, and thank God that she did! Roses and blessings and grace came with you," said the Judge, with emotion. "But this boy—what is he to us, or what can he ever be? He is so freaky, and unsteady, and passionate, and flies off at a word, and goes before he is touched. He will do nothing, and come to nothing."
"What can he do? Would you really have him buy an axe and chop cord-wood, or work as a carpenter, or sell tape behind the counter? Are there not enough to do all that work as fast as it needs to be done? Is there not a clamorous need of brain-work, and who is there to do it? Who is to govern, and manage, and control twenty years hence? Look over all the young men whom you know, and who promises to be fit to lead? Think over those you know in Cleveland, or Painesville, or Warren. Is somebody to come from somewhere else? Think of your own plans and expectations. Who can help you? I see possibilities in this wayward, passionate, hasty, generous youth. He is a tender and devoted son, and I am glad he came back; and nobody knows how he may be pushed against us and others."
"Well," said the Judge, after a thoughtful pause, "what can I do? What would you have me do—change myself, or try to change him?"
"I don't know," thoughtfully: "I think there is nothing you can do now. I would wish you to cultivate a manner towards him that would leave it in your power to serve him or make him useful, if occasion presents. He needs a better education, and perhaps a profession. He should study law. He has a capacity to become a very superior public speaker—one of the first. I don't think there is much danger of his forming bad habits or associations. He avoids and shuns everything of that kind. You know he deeded his share of his father's land to his brother, to provide a home for his mother, and I presume will remain, both from choice and necessity, with her for the present."
The Judge mused over her words. He did not tell her of having met and left Barton the other side of the Chagrin; nor did he disclose fully the dislike he felt for him, or the fears he may have entertained at the idea of any intimacy between him and Julia. His wife mused also in her woman's way. She, too, would have hesitated to have Barton restored to the old relations of his boyhood. While she knew of much to admire and hope for in him, she knew also that there was much to cause anxiety, if not apprehension. In thinking further, she was inclined to call upon his mother, whom she much esteemed for her strong and decisive traits of character, soft and womanly though she was. Cares and anxieties had kept her from association with her neighbors, among whom, as she knew, she seldom appeared, except on occasions of sickness or suffering, or when some event seemed to demand the presence of a deciding woman's mind and will. She remembered one or two such times in their earlier forest life, when Mrs. Ridgeley had quietly assumed her natural place for a day, to go back to her round of widowed love, care and toil. She would make occasion to see her, and perhaps find some indirect way to be useful to both mother and son.