For the Major: A Novelette

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"You are mistaken," said Madam Carroll, earnestly. Then in her turn she paused. "I venture to predict that soon, very soon, you will find yourself indispensable to your father," she added, in her usual tone.

"Never as you are," answered Sara. She spoke with a humility which, coming from so proud a girl, was touching. For the first time in her life she was acknowledging her step-mother's superiority.

Madam Carroll rose, came across, and kissed her. "My dear," she said, "a wife has more opportunities than a daughter can have; that is all. The Major loves you as much as ever. He is also very proud of you. So proud, indeed, that he has a great desire to have you proud of him as well; you always have been extremely proud of him, you know, and he remembers it. This feeling causes him, perhaps, to make something of—of an effort when he is with you, an effort to appear in every respect himself, as he was before his illness—as he was when you last saw him. This effort is at times fatiguing to him; yet it is probable that he will not relinquish it while he feels that you are noticing or—or comparing. I have not spoken of this before, because you have never liked to have me tell you anything about your father; even as a child you always wanted to get your knowledge directly from him, not from me. I have never found fault with this, because I knew that it came from your great love for him. As I love him too, I have tried to please, or at least not to displease, his daughter; not to cross her wishes, her ideas; not to seem to her officious, presuming. Yet at the same time remember that I love him probably as much as you do. But now that you have asked me, now that I know you wish me to speak, I will say that if you could remove all necessity for the effort your father now makes, by placing yourself so fully upon a lower plane—if I may so express it—that his former self should not be suggested to him by anything in you, in your words, looks, or manner, you would soon find, I think, that this slight—slight constraint you have noticed was at an end. In addition, he himself would be more comfortable. And our dearest wish is of course to make him happy and comfortable, to keep him so."

As she uttered these sentences quietly, guardedly, Sara had grown very pale. Her eyes, large and dark with pain, were searching her step-mother's fair little face. But Madam Carroll's gaze was fixed upon the window opposite; not until she had brought all her words to a close did she let it drop upon her daughter. Then the two women looked at each other. The girl's eyes asked a mute question, a question which the wife's eyes, seeing that it was an appeal to her closer knowledge, at length answered—answered bravely and clearly, sympathetically, too, and with tenderness, but—in the affirmative.

Then the daughter bowed her head, her face hidden in her hands.

Madam Carroll sat down upon the arm of the easy-chair, and drew that bowed head towards her. No more words were spoken. But now the daughter understood all. Her perplexity and her trouble were at an end; but they ended in a grief, as a river ends in the sea—a grief that opened out all round her, overwhelming the present, and, as it seemed to her then, the future as well. Madam Carroll said nothing; the bereavement was there, and the daughter must bear it. No one could save her from her pain. But the girl knew from this very silence, and the gentle touch of the hand upon her hair, that all her sorrow was comprehended, her desolation pitied, understood. For her father had been her idol, her all; and now he was taken from her. His mind was failing. This was the bereavement which had fallen upon her heart and life.

CHAPTER III.

AT sunset of the same day Madam Carroll was in her dining-room; she had changed her dress, and now wore a fresh muslin, with a bunch of violets in her belt. Sara, coming down the stairs, saw the bright little figure through the open door; Judith Inches was bringing in the kettle (for Madam Carroll always made the tea herself), and on the table were one or two hot dishes of a delicate sort, additions to the usual meal. Sara recognized in these added dishes the never-failing touch of the mistress's hand upon the household helm. The four-o'clock dinner had come and gone, but no summons had been sent to her—that pitiless summons which in so many households remains inflexible, though stricken hearts may be longing for solitude, for a respite, however brief, from the petty duties of the day. Through the long hours of the afternoon there had been no knock, not so much even as a footstep outside her door. But now, in the cool of the evening, the one who had thus protected her seclusion was hoping that she would of her own accord come down and take again her accustomed place at the family table. Sara did this. She did more. She had put away the signs of her grief so completely that, save for an added pallor and the dark half-circle under her eyes, she was quite herself again. Her soft hair was smooth, her black dress made less severe by a little white scarf which encircled the narrow linen collar. Scar was sitting on the bottom stair as she came down. She put her hand on his head. "Where is papa?" she said.

"Papa is in the library. I think he is not coming out to tea," answered the child.

"Oh, but we must make him come—the dining-room is so dull without papa. Let us go and ask him." She took his hand, and they went together to the library. Madam Carroll, who had heard their words through the open door, watched them go. She did not interfere. She told Judith Inches to take back the hot dishes to the kitchen.