MRS. LONGBOW’S BIOGRAPHY
BY GORDON HALL GEROULD
MY acquaintance with Mrs. Longbow was due to my early friendship with her son Charles. Mrs. Longbow and her two daughters swung into my orbit quite unimportantly at first as shadowy persons to whom Charlie wrote letters home while we were boys at school; later I came to know the mother as an imposing figure, shiny with black jet, who eyed the school from a platform on those great occasions when Charlie received prizes and I did not. I never learned her weight, but I saw that her displacement was enormous. By successive stages, as I increased in stature and in years, my knowledge of her grew. I visited her son, I danced with her daughters, I frequently conversed with her,—she preferred to converse rather than to talk,—and I came to know as much of her habit and attitude of mind, perhaps, as one could who was thirty years her junior, not actively engaged in reforming the world, and of the despised sex.
Mrs. Longbow—Amelia E. Longbow, to designate her at once by the name that she made illustrious—was of the older school of philanthropists, who combined militant activity with the literary graces and a tremendous sense of personal dignity. She could despise men and yet receive them in her drawing-room without embarrassment; she could wage a bitter warfare on wickedness and, when deeply stirred, write a tolerable sonnet. She was indefatigable in her labors, but she was never, to my knowledge, flurried or hurried. A large presence, she moved through life with the splendid serenity of a steam-roller. She was capable of prodigious labor, but not of idleness. Whatever her hands found to do she did with all her might—and in her own way. At one time or another she was engaged in reforming most things that are susceptible of improvement or of disturbance. If she did not leave the world better than she found it, the fault was the world’s, not hers.
It was a considerable shock to me that she should leave the world at all, so necessary had she seemingly become to its proper administration, let alone its progress. I read the news of her death in London just as I was sailing for home after a summer’s holiday, and I felt a touch of pride that I had known the woman whose career was written large that day in the journals of a sister nation. But, as I reflected, neither America nor England had waited till her death to pay their homage. She had lived long, and on many great occasions during three decades she had been signally and publicly honored as the most remarkable of her sex. The cable-despatches announced that she left a comfortable fortune, and leading articles agreed that she was wholly admirable. I felt sure that she would have regarded the praise as unmerited if she had not shown her ability by leaving a respectable inheritance to her children. I had reason also to believe that she never lost her self-confident assurance of her own worth: she died, the newspapers said, quite peacefully.
Once back in New York, I took an early occasion to call on my friend Charles Longbow. I had always liked him ever since the day that I fished him, a shivering mite, out of the skating-pond at school. I had been his chum thereafter until the end of my college course. Though I could not emulate his distinction in scholarship or public speaking, I could at least be useful to him, by virtue of my year’s seniority, in protecting him from the consequences of his mother’s celebrity. I even did him some service by pushing him into the thick of undergraduate life. I was really very fond of him, and I was sure he liked me.
If I had seen less of Charlie in later years, it was merely because our paths did not often cross in a natural way. We boast about our civilization a good deal, but we keep to our trails much as savages do—or animals, for that matter. Besides, for some years I had a good reason, not connected with Charlie’s mother or himself, for keeping away from the Longbow house. So I had been with him less than I could have wished, though I had never lost the habit of his friendship. I was busy in my own way, and he was occupied in his. He had never been the conspicuous success that his youth had promised, but he was more widely known than many men with a greater professional reputation. To the larger public he was always, of course, his mother’s son. At forty he was what one might call a philanthropic lawyer. He did a certain amount of ordinary business, and he wrote on many topics of contemporary interest for the reviews, made many addresses to gatherings of earnest people, served on many boards and commissions. He had retained the modesty and generosity of his boyhood, which made some of us devoted to him even though we were not in full sympathy with all of his activities. Pride and vain-glory in him were purely vicarious: he was a little conceited about his mother.
As far back as my college days I had begun to distrust the estimate in which Mrs. Longbow was held by her family and, as well as one could judge, by herself. All of them, be it said, were supported in their opinion of her greatness and her abounding righteousness by the world at large. It was one of my earliest disillusionments to discover the yawning vacuity that lay behind her solid front of fame; it was a sad day for me, though it fostered intellectual pride, when I found out that she was not such a miracle of goodness as she seemed. Though Charles, as a matter of course, knew her much more intimately than I, I think that he never penetrated her disguise.
With his sisters the case was somewhat different, as I began to suspect not long after my own private discovery. They were a little older than Charles, and had better opportunities of watching their mother at close range. Helen married, when she was about twenty-five, a man of her own age, who eventually became one of the most prominent editors in New York—Henry Wakefield Bradford. She made him a good wife, no doubt, and had some share in his success both as debtor and as creditor. Whether she loved him or not, she supported his interests loyally. Though she had made an escape from her mother’s house, she did not desert her. Indeed, in Helen’s marriage Mrs. Longbow might truly have been said to have gained a son rather than to have lost a daughter. The Bradfords were ardent worshipers at the shrine, and they worshiped very publicly. In private, however, I detected a faint acidity of reference, a tinge of irony, that made me suspect them of harboring envious feelings. Perhaps they resented the luster of satellites, and would have liked to emulate Mrs. Longbow’s glow of assured fame. Helen never seemed to me a very good sort, though we were accounted friends. She had many of her mother’s most striking qualities.
Margaret, who was only a year older than Charles, never married. She was her mother’s secretary and a most devoted daughter. She received with her, traveled with her, labored for her without apparent repining. Whether she ever had time to think seriously of marrying, or of leaving her mother on other terms, always seemed to me doubtful. At all events, she said as much to me repeatedly when at the age of twenty-five I proposed to her. Without question, she had a great deal to do in helping Mrs. Longbow to transact efficiently the business of the universe. She was prettier than Helen, who grew large and stately by her thirtieth year and was of too bold and mustached an aquiline type for beauty. Margaret was fair, and retained the girlish lines of her slender figure until middle age. She was clever, too, like the rest of the family, and had seen much of the world in her mother’s company. She wrote stories that had considerable success, and she would have had personal distinction as a member of any other family. My only reason for suspecting that she sometimes wearied of her filial rôle was a remark that she once made to me when I complimented her on a pretty novel she had published.
“Oh, yes,” she replied, “one has to do something on one’s own account in self-defense. Mother swallows everybody—she is so wonderful.” The final phrase, I thought, did not altogether let Mrs. Longbow out.
They were all writers, you see, all well known on the platform and in the press, all active in good works and reform; but the children’s celebrity shone mainly with a borrowed light. Irreverently enough, I used to think of the mother as being like a hen with chicks. The hen’s maternal clucking calls less attention to her brood than to herself.
When I went to see Charles, I expected to find him overwhelmed with genuine grief, and Margaret, if she appeared at all, endeavoring to conceal the relief that was sure to be mixed with her natural sense of loss. Of course, Helen—Mrs. Bradford, that is—I should not see, for she had her own house. I should have to pay her a visit of condolence separately. I dreaded this first meeting, though I was really very sorry for Charles, whose devotion to his mother could not be doubted. I knew that he would expect me to say things at once consoling and laudatory, which would be difficult to frame. With so vocal a family, the pressure of a hand and a murmured word would be insufficient expressions of sympathy.
When I reached the old house rather too far east on Thirty-eighth Street, I was in a state of mind so craven that I would gladly have shirked my duty on any pretext whatsoever; but I could think of none. Instead, I had to tell both Margaret and Charles how deeply I felt their loss. I found them up-stairs in the library, a dismal room with too much furniture of the seventies, a mean grate, and heavy bookcases filled with an odd collection of standard sets, reports of philanthropic societies and commissions, and presentation copies of works in all fields of literature and learning. I cherished a peculiar dislike for this room, and I found no help in its dreadful reminders of Mrs. Longbow’s active life. I did not quit myself well, but I managed to speak some phrases of commonplace sympathy.
Charles, lean, dark, and bearded, took up my words, while Margaret drooped in her chair as though some spring had gone wrong inside her.
“It was good of you to come so soon,” he said. “I’m sorry that you couldn’t have been here for the funeral. Our friends were magnificent. We were overwhelmed by the tide of sympathy. I think I might say that the whole country mourned with us. You would have appreciated it, as we did. It made one proud of America to see how she was revered; it made me personally ready to ask forgiveness for all my cheap outbursts of temper when I’ve thought the country was going wrong.”
“The papers on the other side were full of praises for her,” I remarked uncomfortably.
“I know,” returned Charles. “The world must be better than we have thought. I’d like to believe that the moral awakening in which she was a leader has stirred men and women everywhere to right the wrongs of humanity. But it will take more lives like hers to complete the work.”
“She interested a great many people in reform who wouldn’t have taken it up if it hadn’t been for her influence. And all of you are carrying on work along the same lines.” I had to say something, and I could think of nothing less inane.
“Yes,” Charlie answered, wrinkling his forehead; “we must go on as well as we can. But it’s like losing a pilot. She had genius.”
Margaret Longbow suddenly straightened herself and began to wipe her eyes delicately.
“Mother had strength for it,” she said in a broken voice; “she had wonderful energy.”
“But think what you have done—all of you!” I protested. “As a family, you are the most active people I know.”
“I can’t go on—now. I’m going away as soon as things are straightened out. I’m going to Italy to rest.” Margaret’s figure relaxed as suddenly as it had stiffened. She lay back against a pile of cushions with the inertness of utter fatigue.
“Margaret!” Charles exclaimed sharply. “What would mother have said?”
Margaret’s thin lip curled. She made me wonder what explosion was going to follow.
“It doesn’t matter about Robert,” she said, turning her head ever so slightly in my direction. “He knows that I’ve tagged behind mother all my life; he knows that I never could keep up. He even knows how hard I used to try. I’m not good enough and I’m not clever enough. She was a whirlwind. I feel her death more than any of you,—I understood her better,—but you don’t know what it has been like.”
She was sobbing now, gently, indeed, but with every sign of an hysterical outburst, save that her voice never rose above its ordinary key. I felt sure that she was not being histrionic even for her own benefit, sure that she was filled with despairing grief, sure that she was holding hard to the crumbling edge of self-control; but I wondered what martyrdom of stifled individualism she was keeping back. Evidently Charles and I did not understand.
Pale, horrified, obviously angry at the sudden exposure of his sister’s weakness, Charles Longbow rose from his chair and confronted her.
“Margaret,” he said, and I detected in him, as he spoke, a comical resemblance to Mrs. Longbow, “I can’t see, to be sure, why you should behave so childishly. You ought to know better than any one else the importance of mother’s work, and you owe it to her not to drop out now that she is dead. She liked Italy, too, but she had a sense of duty.”
“She had—oh, I know all about it!” Margaret had suddenly grown calm, and spoke with something like scorn. “But you don’t know what it was to live with her so many hours every day—to be so dependent on her. I haven’t cultivated any sense of duty of my own.”
“You must need to rest,” I remarked, wishing more than ever that I could go away, and feeling sure that Charles would give anything to get me out of the house. “A winter in Italy would do both of you a lot of good, I feel sure, after all the strain you’ve been through. Why don’t you go with Margaret, Charlie?”
He looked at me, sad-eyed and a little wondering.
“I couldn’t possibly take the time, Bob; but I dare say Margaret does need a change. I’m sorry it I spoke impatiently. Only I can’t stand it, Sister, when you speak as though mother were somehow to blame.”
“It’s all right, Charlie,” said Margaret, smiling from her cushions. “I shouldn’t have broken out so. My nerves are on edge, I suppose. Perhaps I shall come back from Italy after a while quite ready to take hold. And one can write even in Italy.”
“That reminds me.” Charles turned again to me. “I’ve been hoping to see you soon about one thing. We agreed the other day that you ought to be asked about it before we made any move. The public naturally expects an authorized biography of mother. The demand for it has already begun. Don’t you think Henry Bradford is the person to do it? Helen thinks he would be willing to.”
“He would do it well, undoubtedly,” I answered, rather startled by the abruptness of the question. I was really unprepared to give a judicial opinion about the matter.
“Henry would like to do it,” said Margaret, “and he would give a very just estimate of her public life. Helen could look after the English; she always does. Only I won’t have Henry or anybody else rummaging through all mother’s private papers.”
“Of course we should—I mean, you ought to look them over first,” returned Charles, uneasily.
“Henry has no discretion whatever,” commented Margaret. “Besides, mother never liked him particularly, as both of you know perfectly well. She liked you, Robert, a great deal better. Helen would be furious if I said it to her, but it’s true.”
“Yes, yes, Henry tried her sometimes,” Charles murmured; “but he knows about everything in which she was interested.”
“Why shouldn’t you do it?” I asked him.
“Oh, it ought to be some one further removed from her,” he answered—“some one who could speak quite freely. I couldn’t do it.”
“There’s one other possible plan,” I remarked. “Haven’t you thought of it? Why shouldn’t the three of you collaborate in a life? It seems to me that might be the most suitable arrangement. All of you write; you have all been associated with your mother in her work. Why shouldn’t you?”
“That plan hasn’t occurred to us,” returned Charles, hesitatingly. “It might be appropriate: ‘The Life of Mrs. Longbow, by Her Children.’ What do you think, Margaret? Would Helen think well of it?”
“Helen might,” replied Margaret. “I don’t quite know. I’d rather be left out of it myself.”
“Oh, I couldn’t work with Helen alone,” said Charles. “She would overrule me at every turn.”
“There you are!” Margaret put in. “It would be a beautiful idea, no doubt; but we should find it hard to agree.”
“Yet we ought to consider the plan before we ask any one else to do the book,” said Charles, looking at me as though for confirmation. He had been walking about while we talked, and now stood facing us from behind the library table.
“You certainly ought,” I agreed, rising to go.
A few days later I paid a visit to the Bradfords. Helen was alone. She received me graciously and spoke of her mother with much feeling and pride. Very soon, however, she turned the conversation to her sister.
“I’m troubled about Margaret,” she said. “You’ve seen her. I’d like to know exactly what you think. She seems to me to be on the edge of a nervous collapse, but she won’t see a doctor.”
“She is very tired, evidently,” I responded, “but I thought she had herself well in hand. Perhaps it may be a good thing for her to put through her plan of going to Italy.”
“Perhaps so. The poor child needs a rest, certainly. But I’m not at all sure that she ought to be allowed to go away by herself.” Helen Bradford eyed me significantly. “What worries me is her fixed idea that mother has somehow been unjust to her. It is almost insane, this idea, and it distresses me more than I can say. You see, I shouldn’t speak of it at all except that you have known her so long. You see how absurd the idea is. Margaret has had greater advantages from mother’s society than any one else, as you know. It was a great privilege.”
“Undoubtedly.” I could not bring myself to say more than that, for I had a swift vision of what forty-two years of constant association with Mrs. Longbow must have been like. “But the strain on her these last two months must have been very great.”
“Hardly greater than for me,” remarked Helen Bradford, stiffly. “I relieved her at every turn. I think I did my full duty to mother. Besides, mother never gave trouble; she was almost painfully anxious to avoid doing so.”
“I am sure of it,” I hastened to say; “but I suspect that Margaret has not the strength of Mrs. Longbow. You are more like your mother in many respects.” I was not quite sure whether Helen would take this as a compliment, whether she might not detect a flavor of irony in the speech; but I was relieved when it brought to her lips an amiable smile.
“That is very good of you,” she said. “Margaret—poor dear!—has always been perfectly well, but she has never had much vitality. That is very important for us who are busy with so many kinds of work. Charles doesn’t get tired in the same way, but he gets worried and anxious. Mother never did. Margaret and Charles are more like my father. You never knew him, I think?”
All through her speech Helen Bradford had been pluming herself much as I have seen fat geese do. The comparison is inelegant, but it conveys the impression she gave me. At the end she sighed.
“No,” I answered, “he died before I knew Charlie.”
“I remember him vividly,” said Helen, “though I was a mere girl when he died, and I have often heard mother say that he fretted himself to death over non-essentials, quite selfishly. I am, I hope and believe, whatever my faults may be, not like that.”
I could truthfully say that she was not, and I added some commonplace about Margaret’s restoration.
“I shall have to look after her,” she went on. “Charles can’t be depended on to do so. It is a great pity she has never married. A great deal will come on me, now that mother is gone. For instance, there is her biography. I must arrange for it without too much delay. I am aware that people will be waiting for it eagerly.”
“We can hardly hope to have the complete record of so active a life immediately,” I said, thinking to be polite.
“Perhaps not,” she answered, “but my husband says that the success of a biography depends very largely on when it is issued. It mustn’t be too long delayed. You may not know that mother kept a copious journal all through the years, from her earliest girlhood. With the letters she saved, it will be of the greatest service to her biographer, I feel sure.”
“I am convinced of it,” I returned. Indeed, I could picture to myself the amazing confessions that must be hidden in any really intimate journal by Mrs. Longbow. I suspected that the revelation of it would shock right-minded persons; but I did not doubt that the spectacle of self-immolation finding its reward in worldly success and fame would give to thousands the thrill of true romance.
“Charles tells me,” proceeded Mrs. Bradford, “that you suggested the possibility of our collaborating—the three of us—in the biography. It is a very beautiful idea. ‘Mrs. Longbow, by Her Children!’ The great public servant as seen by those nearest and dearest to her, by those whom she brought into the world and trained to follow in her steps! Mother would have appreciated your thinking of it, Robert, I feel sure. But you must see how impracticable it would be. Margaret is in such a state, and Charles would never get anything done. He is very busy with his work, of course, as all of us are; and he is apt to weigh things very critically. I should have great trouble in getting the biography written within a reasonable time. I have thought that perhaps we ought to get Henry to do it.”
“He would no doubt do it very effectively,” I said, and rose to go.
“We must consider carefully a great many things, mustn’t we?” she remarked brightly. “And the matter is so very important! It is a great responsibility for one to be the child of such a mother. So kind of you to come, Robert! I prize your sympathy not only for itself, but because I know how greatly you admired mother. It has been a great consolation to see you.”
I left the house, glad that the interview was over and determined to see as little of the Longbows as possible, unless I could get Charles by himself. It struck me that, in donning her mother’s prophetic mantle, of which she obviously considered herself the rightful heiress, Mrs. Bradford found compensation for her responsibilities. I could not see why I should be troubled about the question of a proper tribute to Mrs. Longbow, whose personality I disliked as cordially as I disliked most of her agitations. I wondered whether other friends had suffered in the same way.
I was, indeed, not altogether pleased the following week when I received from Margaret Longbow an invitation to dine informally with her brother and herself.
“Helen and her husband are to be here Friday night,” she wrote, “and I feel the need of outside support. They seem to think me harmlessly insane, but will perhaps treat me less like a mental invalid if you are here. I’m sure you will be bored; but I hope you will come, if you can, for old friendship’s sake.” I could think of no polite excuse for not responding to this signal of distress, and accordingly found myself once more gathered to the collective bosom of the Longbows. I could only hope that they would have the decency not to appeal to me for any further advice.
The family was assembled before I arrived at the house. Margaret and Charles looked a little uneasy, I thought; but the Bradfords, as usual, were superbly aware only of their superiorities. Henry Bradford, well-fed and carefully dressed, exuded success at every pore, but only the delicate aroma of success. As an experienced editor, he had learned to be tactful, and he had made himself the plump embodiment of tact. His features composed themselves on this occasion with a becoming trace of regretful melancholy and an apparent willingness to be as cheerful as seemed proper. The only discordant note in his whole well-rounded presentation of a journalist in easy circumstances was the top of his head. Seen through a sparse thicket of hair, it was shiny, like a coat worn too long. His wife had the impressive exterior of a volcano in repose.
During the simple dinner we talked pleasantly about a variety of things that were within the province of the Longbows: municipal reform, Tolstoy, labor-unions, a plain-spoken novel by Mrs. Virgin, Turkish misgovernment, the temperance movement. We did not mention Mrs. Longbow’s name, but we felt, I am sure, that her spirit hovered over us. I, at least, had an abiding sense of her immanence. When we went back to the drawing-room together, I expected that her virtues would become the topic of general conversation, and I dreaded the hour to follow.
My fears were relieved, however, by the prompt withdrawal of Mrs. Bradford and Charles. He wished her to sign some document. Margaret and I were left for Henry Bradford to amuse, which he did to his own satisfaction. He was kind enough to be interested in my humble efforts to live honestly by my pen: he expressed himself almost in those terms. When his wife appeared in the doorway and announced briefly, “Henry dear, I want you,” I saw him waddle away without feeling myself moved to sympathy.
“Henry is insufferable, isn’t he?” said Margaret, quietly. “I don’t see how Helen can stand him except that he stands her.”
“Oh, come,” I answered, “you’re too hard on them. Besides, you wouldn’t like it if I agreed with you.”
“Really, I shouldn’t mind at all. I’ve stood by the family all my life, and I’ll stand by Charlie now; but I’ve never been deceived into believing that I cared for Helen or Henry. I wouldn’t hurt them even by saying what I think of them to anybody except you, but I prefer not to see them. That’s one reason why I’m going abroad. We sha’n’t be so intimate after I get back.”
She rose languidly from her chair and fidgeted nervously with some books on the table.
“How long do you plan to stay?” I asked, crossing the room to her side.
“You think it will take me a good while to get free of their clutches? I’m going to stay till I feel safe, that’s all. I don’t want to do anything for anybody again, and I sha’n’t come back as long as there’s a chance of my being asked.”
She spoke vindictively, with more vehemence than I had ever seen in her. She gave me the impression that the stifled flame of rebellion was breaking free at last, but only when the food for it was exhausted. In her trim and faded prettiness she was mildly tragic—futilely tragic would perhaps be the better phrase. Life and Mrs. Longbow had sapped her vitality; that was clear. They had taken much from her, and given her little in exchange. I wondered fatuously whether she had chosen well twenty years before in devoting herself to reform and her mother rather than to me.
Doubtless I hesitated longer than was conventionally polite over framing my reply, for she turned to me with a rather mocking laugh and went on:
“It’s very sad about me, isn’t it? But you needn’t pity me, Robert. You gave me a chance to get out once, you remember, and I chose to do good to all the world instead of battening on you. It was foolish of me, but it was probably a lucky thing for you.”
“I’ve never married, Margaret,” I answered, feeling somewhat grim and a little uncomfortable.
“Pure habit, I suppose,” she answered lightly, “but it ought to give you satisfaction that I’m sorry both of us haven’t. You needn’t be frightened, even though Helen has the absurd notion of throwing me at your head now. You see what I am—just dregs. Mother and Helen have never got over thinking me a young girl, and they’ve always planned for you to marry whatever was left of me after they’d finished.”
“I’ve never been very proud of my own behavior,” I put in. “I ought to have been able to make you marry me back there, but—”
“You were no match for mother.” Margaret ended the sentence for me. “Nobody ever was. But even she shouldn’t have expected to keep that old affair in cold storage for twenty years. I’m a baby to be complaining, but I can’t help it this once. Things are so terribly dead that I can safely tell you now that you ought to marry—not that I suppose you have been restrained on my account for some fifteen years! I’m merely showing you my death-certificate in the hope that you’ll avoid my unhappy end.”
“But, Margaret, what are you going to do?” I cried, too disturbed by the situation not to realize that she had diagnosed it correctly.
“Oh, as I’ve said, I’m going to inter myself decently in Italy, where I shall probably write a book about my mother. I can stay away just so much longer.”
At that moment the others came in and stopped whatever reply I could have made.
“So sorry we had to leave you like this,” said Mrs. Bradford, sailing majestically into the room; “but you are such an old friend that we treat you like one of the family, you see.” She smiled in a way that made her meaning plain.
“It doesn’t matter about Bob, of course,” said Charles, who was clearly so much engrossed by his own affairs as to be impervious to anything else. “He and Margaret ought to be able to entertain each other.”
“I think we do very well, thank you,” I remarked with a flicker of amusement. “At least I do.”
Charles, quite serious and earnest, planted himself in full view of the group of us.
“Look here,” he said “—all of you. I wish to talk to you about mother’s biography.”
“Yes, indeed,” responded Mrs. Bradford, settling heavily into a chair, “we ought to consider the matter at once. It was largely on account of it that Henry and I took the time to come here to-night.” She assumed her most business-like expression.
“There’s really nothing more to consider,” went on Charles, puckering his forehead. “I simply wish to tell you that I have received an excellent offer from Singleton for a work in two volumes, and have accepted it. He will give a large sum for the book—a very large sum.”
“Charles,” said Helen Bradford, severely, “how can you speak of money in such a connection? I think that you acted very unwisely in not first consulting your family. As a matter of fact, your precipitate action is very embarrassing, isn’t it, Henry?”
“You certainly should have told us that the offer had been made,” concurred Bradford, looking aggrieved. “It does complicate things.”
“I can’t see why,” said Charles, with a sudden burst of anger. “I’m mother’s executor, as well as her only son, and I surely have the right to make my own arrangements about her biography. I thought at first that some one outside the family ought to write it, but I’ve been shown quite clearly that it is my duty to do it.”
Mrs. Bradford’s firm jaw dropped a little.
“You do it!” she cried. “I’ve decided that it will be most suitable for me to write it myself. In point of fact, Henry has already made satisfactory arrangements for me with Banister. So you see—”
“I see,” said Charles, impatiently, “that you and Henry have been meddling in the most unwarrantable fashion, quite as usual. You’ll have to get out of it with Banister the best way you can, that’s all.”
Margaret’s even voice broke in on the dispute.
“It may interest you to know that I’m proposing to write a book about mother myself. The Henrysons naturally wish one to go with their edition of her writings, and they pay quite handsomely. What they want isn’t a complete biography, you know—just the recollections of a daughter. They seem to think me the one best qualified to do it. Perhaps, after all, I am.”
“It is impossible!” exclaimed Helen Bradford. “I cannot allow this thing to go on. At great personal inconvenience I have agreed to do the book; and I refuse to be placed in the undignified position into which you are trying to force me. I decided that I’d better write it myself, partly because you seemed to be jealous about having Henry do it. I have prepared to give valuable time to it. And what is my reward? You have gone ahead secretly and made arrangements on your own account not for one biography, but for two. I think it most selfish and inconsiderate of you.”
“It will injure sales,” put in Henry Bradford, knowingly.
“Of course you don’t need to go ahead with yours, Helen, if you feel like that,” said Margaret.
“I don’t see why—” began Mr. Bradford, but he was interrupted by his wife.
“I don’t see why either. There is no reason. I’m not going to let you get all the honor and reward of it. What would people think of me?”
Margaret laughed.
“Only that you were too busy to write, my dear,” she remarked; “that you had left it to less important members of the family.”
“I shall write the book in spite of you,” Mrs. Bradford replied. She was furiously angry and a quite unlovely spectacle. A volcano in eruption is not necessarily beautiful. “Mother always taught me,” she continued, “never to be too busy to do my duty. I couldn’t bear to think of leaving her great personality in the hands of either of you. You are undutiful children.”
Charles Longbow’s frown had deepened, but he had regained his composure.
“I think, Helen,” he said, “that mother wouldn’t like to see us quarreling like this. She believed in peace and calm.” For a moment his natural generosity seemed to assert itself. “You are so much like her that I can’t bear to have anything come between us. I’m sorry I didn’t know you wanted to write the book.”
“You did very wrong in not consulting me,” replied Helen, with angry dignity. “I was at least mother’s eldest child, and took a considerable share in her great work. You ought to see Singleton and get him to release you from your contract.”
“Perhaps Helen ought to have her own way,” remarked Margaret, wearily. “She always has.”
“I’m certainly not going to change my arrangements now,” Charles returned, with sudden stiffness. “I shall bring out a work in suitable form, something on a scale worthy of mother. What is more, her journal and all her papers are mine to do what I please with.”
“Come, Henry!” cried Mrs. Bradford. “You may like to have insults heaped upon me, but I won’t remain to hear them.”
Magnificently, explosively, she swept from the room, followed close by her husband. For a moment the brother and sister stood looking at each other like naughty children apprehended in a fault. I was forgotten. At length Margaret sank into the chair from which her sister had risen and gave a nervous laugh.
“I hope you have enjoyed the entertainment we’ve been giving you, Robert,” she said, turning her head in my direction. “This will be the end of everything. All the same, Charlie dear, I hope you’ll let me sort mother’s papers before I go away.”
“Oh, come, Charlie,”—I plucked up my courage to play the peacemaker, for I felt that this dance on a newly made grave would disturb even Mrs. Longbow’s serene and righteous soul,—“there’s no reason why Helen shouldn’t write a book as well as you. The public will stand for it. I hope you’ll tell her so.”
Charles’s solemn face cracked with a grin.
“I sha’n’t have to,” he said. “But I’m sorry you were here-you know what I mean. I’m ashamed.”
I could not fail to see that his pride was touched to the bleeding-point, and that Margaret was utterly weary. With only a hand-shake and a word of parting I went away, glad enough, you can understand, to make my escape.
I met none of them again till I went to the docks, a month later, to say farewell to Margaret. Charles was with her, but Helen was not there. Margaret looked very old and ill, I thought. Just before the boat sailed, she managed to screen herself from her brother, and hurriedly slipped an envelop into my hand.
“Please give this to Charlie when I’m well out to sea,” she whispered. “I can’t bear to send it through the post-office.”
“How soon?” I asked under my breath, supposing her secrecy to be the whim of a nervous invalid.
“Give me three days,” she replied, glancing furtively at her brother, who was just then absorbed by the spectacle of a donkey-engine on a lower deck. “It’s about mother’s journal and her papers. Don’t you see? I looked them over,—Charlie told me to,—but I couldn’t bear to explain to him, and I haven’t had time yet to copy them. My letter tells about it.”
She turned from me quickly and took her brother’s arm, insisting that both he and I must leave the ship at once. Twenty minutes later she waved gaily to us as the cables slackened and the boat swung out into the river.
I disliked my new commission, but I had been given no opportunity to refuse it. At the time appointed I carried the letter to Charles, whom I found in the family library amid heaps of faded and disorderly manuscript. As I entered the room, he rose excitedly.
“It’s extraordinary!” he exclaimed. “Mother’s journals are gone, and so is all her intimate correspondence. Where can Margaret have put them? She went through everything.”
“Perhaps this will tell you,” I said, handing him the letter. “Margaret gave it to me just before we left the boat, and told me to keep it till to-day.”
He read the letter, frowning.
“What does the girl think!” he cried when he had ended. “It’s extremely careless of her—she has carried off all of mother’s really important papers; says she hadn’t finished arranging them, and will return them when that’s done. She must be out of her head to think of trusting such invaluable documents to any carrier in the world. And how does she suppose I’m to go on with my book in the meantime? It’s mad.”
“I don’t quite see, myself,” I responded, though in reality I was able to understand her motives: evidently she wished to spare Charles the full light of their mother’s self-revelation.
“No one could see,” he returned, his lean cheeks flushed with anger. “It’s impossible. It’s going to be a great inconvenience, even if the things don’t get lost, and it may cost me a lot of money.”
“Can’t you be working through what’s left?” I asked. “There seems to be a lot of material.”
“That’s just the trouble,” he replied. “Margaret has sorted everything, and she’s left the rubbish—papers that couldn’t be of any use for the book I’m engaged to write.”
I was sympathetic, and willing to give Margaret her due measure of blame. If she had been less worn and flurried, she might have found some more discreet way of protecting her brother’s happiness and her mother’s reputation. Yet I rather admired her courage. I wondered how she would manage to Bowdlerize the journal without exciting her brother’s suspicions. I awaited the outcome with curiosity and some misgivings. When I left Charles, he was writing a peremptory demand for the immediate return of the papers.
My curiosity was amply satisfied, and my misgivings were realized, when I received a letter from Margaret three weeks after she sailed. It was post-marked Gibraltar, and it ran astoundingly:
Dear Robert:
I’m too ill to write, but I must. Try, if you can, to invent some plausible excuse for me, and tell Charlie about it. I can’t possibly write to him. I tried—I really tried—to arrange the papers so that he’d get only a favorable impression from them; but I couldn’t—and I couldn’t let him find mother out. If he had, he’d have been hurt, and he’d have filled his book with reservations. He’s terribly conscientious. I couldn’t bear to have poor mother’s name injured, even if she did treat me badly. She did a lot of good in her way, and she was rather magnificent. So one night I dropped the papers overboard, journal and all. It’s a great deal better so.
I sha’n’t stop till I get to Assisi. Don’t let Charlie be angry with me. I trust you to understand.
Ever sincerely yours,
MARGARET LONGBOW.
I give the letter in full because it explains why no complete biography of Mrs. Longbow has ever been published. Conscientious Charles, naturally, has been unwilling to write a two-volume life without the essential documents, and Margaret has never put her recollections into a book. Helen Bradford’s pompous work, “The Public and Private Life of My Mother,” hardly serves as a biography; it really gives more information about Mrs. Bradford than about Mrs. Longbow. To supply the public’s need of an intimate picture of the great philanthropist I have here set down my impressions of her.
