XXVIII. A NEW ANXIETY.
“Our eyes see all around, in gloom or glow,
Hues of their own fresh borrowed from the heart.”
—Keble.
It was chilly that evening in the old rooms of the house with three windows in the roof; Roger Kenney’s father and mother sat near the grate in the front parlor; curtains and portieres were dropped, the piano lamp with its crimson silk shade threw a glow over the two faces sitting in cosy content opposite each other. The house was still; the girls, Martha and Lou, and the two boys, Maurice and John, had gone down town to an illustrated lecture on India; the maid had her evening out; even Nip, the house-dog, had gone out for an evening ramble; the two “old people,” as in their early sixties they loved to call each other, were alone with each other and a new anxiety.
Mr. Kenney told his wife that nothing in the world made her quite so happy as a new worry, and he wished he could get one for her oftener.
“This will do for awhile,” she remarked; “but this isn’t as bad as that old trouble of Marion’s; a man can work himself out; and Roger has work enough on hand for two worries.”
“Now, what are you going to do about this?” inquired her husband, folding the evening’s paper and laying it upon his knee. “You sent Marion to Bensalem for her charm; will you get Roger away for his?”
“That would do no good,” she replied, discontentedly, “he would not be got away in the first place, and Judith is not a fixture in Bensalem.”
“Judith is worth having,” was the complacent reply.
“That’s the worst of it. So was Don Mackenzie.”
“It’s the best of it, I think. You wouldn’t have your boys and girls carried away by somebody not worth having.”
“But, then, being disappointed in somebody might help them bear it, and turn them around to look at somebody else.”
“A disappointment like that is poor consolation.”
“I don’t suppose the disappointment is the consolation. The somebody else is.”
“You never had the consolation of the somebody else.”
“I have only had the consolation of you,” she retorted.
“Marion has never taken up with anybody,” he said, reflectively.
“She has had no chance—”
“That you know,” he interrupted.
“—That I know,” she accepted meekly, “excepting David Prince.”
“She wouldn’t look at him.”
“No, she wouldn’t. He was younger in the first place—and so different from Don.”
“I’d like to see that English beauty Don has married.”
“How do you know she is a beauty?” asked Marion’s mother, with a touch of jealousy.
“Oh, he wrote that to Roger in his first young admiration. An orphan, living with an uncle, years younger, a capricious beauty, with a little money; wasn’t that the description?”
“Something like it. Marion has carried herself well about this marriage.”
“Why shouldn’t she? She had nothing to carry herself about.”
“You don’t know girls. A memory is a memory.”
“How do you know?” he laughed.
“But this is not helping us out about Roger,” she remarked, ignoring his words and laugh.
“Roger will help himself out; he isn’t his father’s son for nothing.”
“As Marion was not her mother’s girl for nothing,” was the demure reply.
“How do you know—how can you be so certain sure that he wants Judith?”
“She is the very light of his eyes. She has been for years. A mother can see. The thought of her is always about him.”
“Does Marion see it?” Roger’s father inquired, convinced. He had a thorough respect for his wife’s judgment.
“No; that’s the queer part of it. I think Roger is guarded with her. He never had a secret from his mother.”
“Young men never have,” the young man’s father threw in.
“But I know Roger; I wouldn’t be afraid to ask him.”
“Then, why don’t you?”
“Because I know without asking,” she silenced him.
“Now, to come back to the starting point—what do you intend to do about it?”
“Bring Judith here,” she replied impressively.
“That’s a fine move; an effectual separation.”
“If I could send her anywhere else he would think it his duty to go and see her, he would have to know how she was doing—pay her bills, and so forth. There’s no one else to be a father to her. Mrs. Brush leaves everything with him. She has no knowledge of any world outside of that village.”
“Perhaps she is trying to catch him for Judith.”
“Such a worldly thought would never enter her dear, pretty, simple, shrewd head. She has her catch, and she didn’t catch him with guile. She would rather keep Judith than set her on the throne of England. That’s out of the question.”
“Well, I do see that point about bringing her here. He can see her naturally here; nothing to thwart him; she’s such a girl, no older than Martha—you never have any scares about Martha.”
“Martha has never been thrown so with anybody, I wouldn’t allow it. I try to be always on the safe side?”
“You didn’t seem to be on Judith’s safe side.”
“I couldn’t. Nobody asked me. There she was studying at the parsonage, before I knew it.”
“She was only a child then.”
“And I thought it such a good outlet for Marion—it was one of the first things that roused her—that and her Outing Society. My only fear was that she was taking Judith up for the sake of her Cousin Don. His influence somehow seems to run through everything. But I know better now. Judith won her own way. But I didn’t know I was sacrificing Roger to Marion.”
“How could you have hindered?”
“I could have brought Marion home,” she answered, decidedly.
“And spoiled the good Bensalem was doing for her.”
“Oh, dear,” with a sigh, “how lives are tangled up.”
“And it’s rather dangerous for our fingers to get into the tangle,” he suggested, with mild reproof.
“But we must do something,” she exclaimed, in despair.
“Well, yes, I suppose so—when the time comes.”
“Well, the time has come now.”
“I don’t see anything the matter with Roger. He can walk ten miles on a stretch, he rides horseback, he cuts his own kindling wood and makes his own garden, he gives his people two strong sermons a week, beside the prayer meeting and weekly lectures; he goes hunting with one of his deacons and talks farming with another; he neglects nobody, and works like a drum-major. He isn’t hurt.”
“But he will be. Judith will refuse him.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she has never thought of such a thing.”
“I grant that. Why should she? But she will think of it when he suggests it.”
“She will not think of it as he does. He is an old fellow to her; let me see; she was thirteen when she went to Bensalem, and he was—how queer for me to forget—he was twenty-six, just twice her age.”
“He isn’t twice her age now,” observed Mr. Kenney, comically.
“And a woman is always older than a man,” Mrs. Kenney, reflected. “She is nearer his age then, I think, childish as she is. With her hair up she does look older; it’s those blue eyes like a baby, and that complexion. I told Roger she might sit for a picture of Priscilla the Puritan maiden, in her new-fashioned, old-fashioned dress, and he said he had thought of it himself. But, now, Roger,” with a deprecating little appeal, “it will do no harm to bring her here.”
“Not the least bit in the world,” he consented, cheerfully.