I do not remember her father and mother. They both died when I was very young. I have heard that Mr. Kendall was a very handsome man, who scandalized the village greatly by his love of horses and wine, but Father used to tell me he was a scholar and a cultivated man. I am afraid he did not care very much for the comfort of others; and Aunt Naomi always speaks of him as a rake who broke his wife's heart. Charlotte took care of him after Mrs. Kendall died, and was devoted to him, they say. She was a middle-aged woman before she was left alone with that big house, and she sold the Kendall silver to pay his debts. To-night she spoke of him with a sort of pitiful pride, yet with an air as if she had to defend him, perhaps even to herself.
"I'm an old woman, Ruth," she said, "and my own life seems to me like an old book that I read so long ago that I only half remember it. It is forty years since I was engaged."
It is strange I had never known of this before; but I suppose it passed out of people's minds before I was old enough to notice.
"I never knew you had been engaged, Miss Charlotte," I said.
"Then your mother never told you what she did for me," she answered, looking into the fire. "That was like her. She was more than a mother to me at the time"—She broke off, and then repeated, "It was like her not to speak of it. There are few women like your mother, Ruth."
We were both silent for a time, and I had to struggle not to break down. Miss Charlotte sat looking into the fire with the tears running unchecked down her wrinkled cheeks. She did not seem conscious of them, and the thought came to me that there had been so much sadness in her life that she was too accustomed to tears to notice them.
"It is forty years," she said again. "I was called a beauty then, though you'd find that hard to believe now, Ruth, when I'm like an old scarecrow in a cornfield. I suppose no young person ever really believes that an old woman can have been beautiful unless there's a picture to prove it. I'll show you a daguerreotype some time; though, after all, what difference does it make? At least he thought"—
Another silence came here. The embers in the fire dropped softly, and the dull March twilight gathered more and more thickly. I felt as if I were being led into some sacred room, closed many years, but where the dead had once lain. Perhaps it was fanciful, but it seemed almost as if I were seeing the place where poor Miss Charlotte's youth had died.
"It wasn't proper that I should marry him, Ruth. I know now father was right, only sometimes—For myself I suppose I hadn't proper pride, and I shouldn't have minded; but father was right. A Kendall couldn't marry a Sprague, of course. I knew it all along; and I vowed to myself over and over that I wouldn't care for him. When a girl tells herself that she won't love a man, Ruth," she broke in with a bitter laugh, "the thing's done already. It was so with me. I needn't have promised not to love him if I hadn't given him my whole heart already,—what a girl calls her heart. I wouldn't own it; and over and over I told him that I didn't care for him; and then at last"—
It was terrible to hear the voice in which she spoke. She seemed to be choking, and it was all that I could do to keep control of myself. I could not have spoken, even if there had been anything to say. I wanted to take her in my arms and get her pitiful, tear-stained face hidden; but I only sat quiet.