CHAPTER III.
Reader, think of some lovely picture of rustic life, with tender lights and pleasant shadows, with hard lines softened, and sharp angles touched into gentle curves, with a background of picturesque, satisfying appropriateness, with the magic touches that bring out the beauty and refinement and elegance of the scene, which are really there, and that subtly tone down all the roughness and awkwardness and coarseness, which are also equally there. And then, imagine it, if you can, changing under your very eyes, with glaring lights and heavy shadows deepening and sharpening and hardening wrinkles and angles and lines, exaggerating defects, bringing coarseness and age and ugliness into painful prominence, and taking away at a sweep the pretty, rural background which might have relieved and soothed the eye, and putting a dull, common-place, incongruous one in its place. It was something of this sort that happened to John Carter that night, when the picture he had been painting with the sweet lights of love and childhood's fancies, and the tender shadows of memory throwing over it all soft tones of long ago and far away, suddenly stood before him in unvarnished reality, with all the glamor taken away, an every-day fact in his present London life.
I am glad to write it of him that, for the first minute, pleasure was the uppermost feeling in his mind. First thought are often the best and purest. He started up, saying, "Mother! why mother!" in the same tone of glad surprise as he would have done fifteen years before if she had come unexpectedly into the shop at Martel; he did not even think if the door were closed, or what Mr. Hyder would think; he did not notice that she was crumpled and dirty with travel, or that she put her pattens down on his open book and upset the glass of violets; he just took hold of her trembling, hard-worked hands, and kissed her furrowed old cheek, wet with tears of unutterable joy, and repeated "Mother! why, mother!"
I am glad to write it of him; glad that she had that great happiness, realizing the hopes and longings of years past, consoling in days to come when she had to turn back to the past for comfort, or forward to the time of perfect satisfaction. There are these exquisite moments in life, let people say what they will of the disappointments and vanity of the world, when hope is realized, desire fulfilled; but it is just for a moment, no more—just a fore taste of the joys that shall be hereafter, when every moment of the long years of eternity will be still more full and perfect, when we shall "wake up" and "be satisfied."
She was clinging meanwhile to his arm, sobbing out, "Laddie, my boy, Laddie!" with her eyes too dim with tears to see his face clearly, or to notice how tall and grand and handsome her boy was grown, and what a gentleman. Presently, when she was seated in the armchair, and had got her breath again, and wiped her foolish old eyes, she was able to hunt in her capacious pocket for the silver-rirnmed spectacles that had descended from her father, old Master Pullen, in the almshouse, and that Laddie remembered well, as being kept in the old family Bible, and brought out with great pomp and ceremony on Sunday evenings.
"I must have a good look at you, Laddie boy," she said.
And then I think her good angel must have spread his soft wing between the mother and son (though to her mind it seemed only like another tear dimming her sight, with a rainbow light on it), to keep her from seeing the look that was marring that son's face. All the pleasure was gone, and embarrassment and disquiet had taken its place.
"However did you come, mother?" he said, trying his best to keep a certain hardness and irritation out of his voice.
"I come by the train, dear," the old woman answered "and it did not terrify me more nor a bit at first, I'll not go for to deny; but, bless you! I soon got over it, and them trains is handy sort of things when you gets used to 'em. I was a good deal put to though when we got to London station, there seemed such a many folks about, and they did push and hurry a body so. I don't know whatever I should 'a done if a gentleman hadn't come and asked me where I wanted to get to. He were a tallish man with whiskers, a bit like Mr. Jones over at Martel, and I dare say you knows him; but he was terrible kind, however."
John Carter did not stop to explain that there were many tallish men with whiskers in London.
"Why didn't you write and say you were coming?"
"Well, there! I thought as I'd give you a surprise; and I knew as you'd be worrying about the journey and thinking as I'd not be able to manage; but I'm not such a helpless old body, after all, Laddie."
"Whom have you left in charge of the cottage?"
"Why, I've give it up altogether. Farmer Harris, he wanted it for his shepherd, and he give me notice. That's why I come all on a sudden like. I says to myself, says I, Laddie's got a home and a welcome for his old mother, and it's only because he thought as I was pretty nearly growed to the old place, and couldn't abear to leave it, that he ain't said as I must come and keep house for him long ago. But, bless you! I've been thinking so of the pleasure of seeing you again that I've pretty nearly forgot as I was leaving my master's grave and all."
"And when must you go back?"
"Not till you gets tired of me, Laddie, or till you takes me to lay me by the old master; for I'd like to lay there, if so be as you can manage it, for I've heard tell as it cost a mort of money buryin' folks out of the parish as they dies in, and maybe it mightn't be just convenient to you."
John Carter busied himself with making the fire burn up into a blaze, while his mother rambled on, telling him little bits of village gossip about people he had long since forgotten or never heard of; of describing her journey, which was a far greater exploit in the old woman's eyes than Lieutenant Cameron's walk across Africa; or dwelling on the delight of seeing him again. He paid little heed to what she said, pretending to be intent on placing a refractory piece of coal in a certain position, or coaxing an uncertain little flame into steadiness; but his head was busy trying to form some plan for getting himself out of his difficult position. He did not want to hurt her, or to be unkind in any way; but it was altogether out of the question having her there to live with him. It would ruin all his prospects in life, his position in his profession and in society; as to his engagement, he did not venture to allow himself even to think of Violet just then. He knew some doctors whose mothers lived with them, and kept house for them, received their guests, and sat at the head of their table, but they were ladies, very different. The very idea of his mother with three or four servants under her was an absurdity. And this thought brought Hyder's grin before his mind. What had happened when his mother arrived? Had she committed herself and him frightfully by her behavior? No doubt that impudent rascal was giving a highly facetious account of it all to the maids in the kitchen. Chattering magpies! And how they would pass it on! How Mary Jane would describe it through the area gate to the milk woman next morning, and cook add a pointed word or two from the front steps as she cleaned them! He could almost smell the wet hearthstone and hear the clinking of the tin milk pails as Biddy hooked them to the yoke and passed on with the story of his degradation. And he could fancy what a choice morsel it would make for Hyder to tell Sir John Meredith's solemn, red-nosed butler, behind his hand, in a hoarse whisper, with winks to emphasize strong points, and an occasional jerk of the thumb over the shoulder and a careful avoidance of names. This thought was too much for his feelings, and the tongs went down with an ominous clatter into the fender, making the old woman jump nearly off her chair, and cutting short a story about the distemper among Squire Wellow's pigs.
"There; it brought my heart into my mouth, pretty near, and set me all of a tremble. I reckon as I'm a little bit tired, and it have shook up my nerves like, and a little do terrify one so."
The sight of her white, trembling old face touched his son's and doctor's heart under the fine, closely woven, well-cut coat of fine gentlemanliness and worldly wisdom which he was buttoning so closely round him.
"You are quite tired out, mother," he said; "you shall have some tea and go to bed. I can't have you laid up, you know."
"There now! if I wasn't thinking as a dish of tea would be the nicest thing in the world! and for you to think of it! Ah! you remembers what your mother likes, bless you!"
In that moment he had quickly made up his mind that at any rate it was too late for that night to do anything but just make her comfortable; to-morrow something must be done without delay; but there was ten striking, and she was evidently quite worn out. He must say something to silence those jays of servants and get her off to bed, and then he could sit down and arrange his plans quietly; for the suddenness of the emergency had confused and muddled him.
"I'll tell them to get some tea," he said, "you sit still and rest." And then he rang the bell decidedly and went out into the hall, closing the doors behind him. He had never felt so self-conscious and uncomfortable as when the man-servant came up the kitchen stairs and stood as deferentially as ever before him. He felt as if he had not got entire control of voice, eyes, or hands. His eyes seemed to avoid looking at the man's face in spite of him, and his voice tried hard to be apologetic and entreating of its own accord. That would never do. He thrust his obtrusive hands into his pockets, and drew up his head, and looked sharply at the man straight in the eyes with a "fight you for 2d." expression, or "every bit as if I owed him a quarter's rent," as Hyder said afterwards; and he spoke in a commanding, bullying tone, very unlike his usual courteous behavior to servants, imagining that by this he conveyed to the man's mind that he was quite at his ease, and that nothing unusual had happened.
"Look here," he said, "I want tea at once in the dining-room, and tell cook to send up some cold meat. I suppose it's too late for cutlets or anything like that?"
"Is the lady going to stop the night, sir?"
The words stung Dr. Carter so, that he would have liked to have kicked the man down the kitchen stairs, but he luckily restrained himself.
"Yes, she is. The best bedroom must be got ready, and a fire lighted, and everything made as comfortable as possible. Do you hear?"
"Yes, sir." The man hesitated a second to see if there were any further orders, and Dr. Carter half turned, looking another way, as he added, "She is a very old friend and nurse of mine when I was a child, and I want her to be made comfortable. She will only be here this one night."
He felt as he turned the handle of the consulting-room door that he had really done it rather well on the whole, and carried it off with a high hand, and not told any falsehood after all, for was she not his oldest friend and his most natural nurse? In reality he had never looked less like a gentleman, and Hyder saw it too.
They say a man is never a hero to his own valet. I do not know if this includes men-servants in general; but certain it is that, up to this time, Dr. Carter had kept the respect of his servant. "I know as he ain't a swell," Mr. Hyder would say to the coterie of footmen who met in the bar of the snug little "public" round the corner; "but for all that he ain't a bad master neither; and as far as my experience serves, he's as good a gent as any of them, and better any day than them dandy, half-pay captings as locks up their wine and cigars, and sells their old clothes, and keeps their men on scraps, and cusses and swears as if they was made of nothing else."
But as Hyder went to his pantry that night, he shook his head with a face of supreme disgust. "That's what I call nasty!" he said, "I'm disappointed in that man. I thought better of him than this comes to. Well, well! blood tells after all. What's bred in the bone will come out in the flesh sooner or later. Nurse indeed! Get along! you don't humbug me, my gent!"
There were no signs, however, of these moralizings in the pantry, or the fuller discussion that followed in the kitchen, when he announced that supper was ready.
"Do ye have your victuals in the kitchen now, Laddie?" the old woman said. "Well, there! it is the most comfortable to my thinking, though gentle-folks do live in their best parlors constant."
Hyder discreetly drew back, and Dr. Carter whispered with a crimson flush all over his face, "Hush, we'll have our talk when this fellow is out of the way. Don't say anything till then."
The old woman looked much surprised, but at last concluded that there was something mysterious against the character of "the very civil-spoken young man as opened the door," and so she kept silence while her son led her into the dining-room, where tea was spread, with what appeared to the old woman royal magnificence of white damask and shining silver.
"You can go," the doctor said. "I will ring if we want anything."
"He don't look such a baddish sort of young man," she said, when the door closed behind the observant Hyder; "and he seems to mind what you says pretty sharp. I thought as he was a gent hisself when he opened the door, as he hadn't got red breeches or gaiters or nothing; but I suppose you will put him in livery by and by?"
"Now, mother, you must have some tea. And you are not to talk till you have eaten something. Here! I'll pour out the tea." For the glories of the silver teapot were drawing her attention from its reviving contents. "I hope they have made it good. Ah! I remember well what tea you used to make in that little brown teapot at home." It was very easy and pleasant to be kind to her, and make much of her now, when no one else was there. He enjoyed waiting on her, and seeing her brighten up and revive under the combined influence of food and warmth and kindness. He liked to hear her admire and wonder at everything, and he laughed naturally and boyishly at her odd little innocent remarks. If they two could have been always alone together, with no spying eyes and spiteful tongues, it would have been all right and pleasant, but as it was, it was quite impossible, and out of the question.
"It ain't the teapot, Laddie, as does it. It's just to let it stand till it's drawed thorough and no longer. Put it on the hob for ten minutes, say I, but that's enough. I don't like stewed tea, and moreover it ain't wholesome neither. This is a fine room, Laddie, and no mistake. Why, the parson ain't got one to hold a candle to it. I'd just like some of the Sunnybrook folk to have a look at it. It would make them open their eyes wide, I warrant!—to see me a-setting here like a lady, with this here carpet as soft as anything, and them curtains, and pictures, and all! I wonder whatever they would say if they could see? I suppose now, as there's a washus or a place out behind somewheres for them servants?"
Dr. Carter laughed at the idea of Mrs. Treasure the cook, and the two smart housemaids, let alone Mr. Hyder, being consigned to a wash-house at the back; and he explained the basement arrangements.
"Underground. Well! I never did! But I think I've heard tell of underground kitchens before, but I never would believe it. It must be terrible dark for the poor things, and damp moreover; and how poor, silly gals is always worriting to get places in London, passes me!"
Presently, when they had done tea, and gone back into the consulting-room, when the old woman was seated in the arm-chair, with her feet on the fender, and her gown turned up over her knees, Dr. Carter drew his chair up near hers, and prepared for his difficult task.
"Mother," he said, laying one of his hands caressingly on her arm (he was proud of his hands,—it was one of his weaknesses that they were gentleman's hands, white and well shaped, and there was a plain gold strap-ring on the little finger, which hit exactly the right medium between severity and display, as a gentleman's ring should),—"Mother, I wish you had written to tell me you were coming."
She took his hands between both her own, hard and horny, with the veins standing up like cord on the backs, rough and misshapen with years of hard work, but with a world of tender mother's love in every touch, that made his words stick in his throat and nearly choke him.
"I knew as you'd be pleased to see me, Laddie, come when I might or how I might."
"Of course I'm glad to see you, mother, very glad; and I was thinking just before you came in that I would run down to Sunnybrook to see you just before Christmas."
And then he went on to explain how different London life was to that at Sunnybrook, and how she would never get used to it or feel happy there, talking quickly and wrapping up his meaning in so many words and elaborations that at the end of half an hour the old woman had no more idea of what he meant that she had at the beginning, and was fairly mystified. She had a strange way, too, of upsetting all his skilful arguments with a simple word or two.
"Different from Sunnybrook? Yes, sure; but she'd get used to it like other folks. Not happy? Why she'd be happy anywheres with her Laddie. There, don't you fret yourself about me; as long as you're comfortable I don't mind nothing."
How could he make her understand and see the gulf that lay between them,—her life and his? It needed much plainer speaking; a spade must be called a spade; and, somehow, it looked a very much more ugly spade when it was so called. How soon did she catch his meaning? He hardly knew, for he could not bear to look into her face, and see the smile fade from her lips and the brightness from her eyes. He only felt her hand suddenly clasp his more tightly, as if he had tried to draw it away from her; and she grew silent, while he talked on quickly and nervously, telling her they would go together to-morrow and find a little snug cottage not far from London, with everything pretty and comfortable that heart could wish for, and a little maid to do the work, so that she need never lay her hand to anything; and how he would come to see her often, very often, perhaps once a week. Still never a word for or against, of pleasure or of pain, till he said,—
"You would like it, mother, wouldn't you?"
And then she answered slowly and faintly,
"I'm aweary, Laddie, too tired like for new plans; and maybe, dearie, too old."
"You must go to bed," he said, with a burst of overwhelming compunction. "I ought not to have let you stop up like this. I should have kept what I had to say till to-morrow when you were rested. Come, think no more of it to-night, everything will look brighter to-morrow. I'll show you your bedroom."
And so he took her up-stairs, such a lot of stairs to the old country legs; but her curiosity overcame her fatigue sufficiently to make her peep into the double drawing-room where the gas lamp in the street threw weird lights and shadows on the ceiling, and touched unexpectedly on parts of mirrors or gilded cornices, giving a mysterious effect to the groups of furniture and the chandelier hanging in its holland covering.
"'Tis mighty fine!" she said, "but an unked place to my mind; like a churchyard somat."
Her bedroom did not look "unked," however, with a bright fire burning, and the inviting chintz-curtained bed and the crisp muslin-covered toilet-table, with two candles lighted. In the large looking-glass on the toilet-table, the figure of the little old woman was reflected among the elegant comfort of the room, looking all the more small and shabby and old, and out of place in contrast with her surroundings.
"Now make haste to bed, there's a good old mother; my room is next to this if you want anything, and I shall soon come up to bed. I hope you'll be very comfortable. Good-night."
And then he left her with a kiss; and she stood for some minutes quite still, looking at the scene reflected in the glass before her, peering curiously and attentively at it.
"And so Laddie is ashamed of his old mother," she said softly, with a little sigh; "and it ain't no wonder!"
(Dr. Carter and his mother)
As Dr. Carter sat down again in his consulting-room by himself, he told himself that he had done wisely, though he had felt and inflicted pain, and still felt very sore and ruffled. But it was wisest, and practically kindest and best for her in the end, more surely for her happiness and comfort; so there was no need to regret it, or for that tiresome little feeling in one corner of his heart that seemed almost like remorse. This is no story-book world of chivalry, romance, and poetry; and to get on in it you must just lay aside sentimental fancies and act by the light of reason and common sense. And then he settled down to arrange the details of to-morrow's plans, and jotted down on a piece of paper a few memoranda of suitable places, times of trains, etc., and resolved that he would spare no pains or expense in making her thoroughly comfortable. He even wrote a note or two to put off some appointments, and felt quite gratified with the idea that he was sacrificing something on his mother's account. The clock struck two as he rose to go up to bed; and he went up feeling much more composed and satisfied with himself, having pretty successfully argued and reasoned down his troublesome, morbid misgivings. He listened at his mother's door, but all was quiet; and he made haste into bed himself, feeling he had gone through a good deal that day.
He was just turning over to sleep when his door opened softly, and his mother came in,—such a queer, funny, old figure, with a shawl wrapped around her and a very large nightcap on—one of the old-fashioned sort, with very broad, flapping frills. She had a candle in her hand, and set it down on the table by his bed. He jumped up as she came in.
"Why, mother, what's the matter? Not in bed? Are you ill?"
"There, there! lie down; there ain't nothing wrong. But I've been listening for ye this long time. 'Tis fifteen years and more since I tucked you up in bed, and you used to say as you never slept so sweet when I didn't do it."
She made him lie down, and smoothed his pillow, and brushed his hair off his forehead, and tucked the clothes round him, and kissed him as she spoke.
"And I thought as I'd like to do it for you once more. Good-night, Laddie, good-night."
And then she went away quickly, and did not hear him call, "Mother! O mother!" after her; for the carefully tucked-in clothes were flung off, and Laddie was out of bed with his hand on the handle of the door, and then,—second thoughts being cooler, if not better,—"She had better sleep," Dr. Carter said, and got back into bed.
But sleep did not come at his call. He tossed about feverishly and restlessly, with his mind tossing hither and thither as much as his body, the strong wind of his pride and will blowing against the running tide of his love and conscience, and making a rough sea between them, which would not allow of any repose. And which of them was the strongest? After long and fierce debate with himself, he came to a conclusion which at all events brought peace along with it. "Come what may," he said, "I will keep my mother with me, let people say or think what they will—even if it costs me Violet herself, as most likely it will. I can't turn my mother out in her old age, so there's an end of it." And there and then he went to sleep.
It must have been soon after this that he woke with a start, with a sound in his ears like the shutting of the street-door. It was still quite dark, night to Londoners, morning to country people, who were already going to their work and labor; and Dr. Carter turned himself over and went to sleep again, saying, "It was my fancy or a dream;" while his old mother stood shivering in the cold November morning outside his door, murmuring—
"I'll never be a shame to my boy, my Laddie; God bless him!"