For the Major: A Novelette

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"Let us look them all over after tea, and 'Good Queen Bertha' too," said Sara. "For Scar and I have come to take you out to tea, father; the dining-room is so dull without you. Besides, I want you to give me some peach preserves, and then say, 'No, Sara, not again,' when I ask for more; and then, after a few minutes, put a large table-spoonful on my plate with your head turned away, while talking to some one else, as though unconscious of what you were doing."

Scar laughed over this anecdote, and so did Scar's father. "But perhaps we shall have no peach preserve," he said, rising.

"We will ask mamma to give us some," answered Sara. She took his arm, and Scar took his other hand; thus together they entered the dining-room.

Madam Carroll welcomed them; but placidly, as though the Major's coming was a matter of course. Since his daughter's return, however, it had not been a matter of course: first for this reason, then for that, his meals had almost always been sent to the library. Now he was tired; and now the dining-room floor might be damp after Judith Inches' scrubbing-brush; now there was an east wind, and now there was a west; or else he was not feeling well, and some one might "drop in," in which case, as the dining-room opened only into the hall, which was wide, like a room, he should not be able to escape. In actual fact, however, there was very little "dropping in" at Carroll Farms, unless one should give that name to the visits of the rector, Mr. Owen. Once in a while, in the evening, when the weather was decisively pleasant, the junior warden came to see them. But all their other acquaintances came to the receptions, made a brief call upon the first Thursday afternoon following, and that was all. The sweet little mistress of the mansion had never uttered one syllable upon the subject, yet each member of the circle of Far Edgerley society knew as well as though it had been proclaimed through the town by a herald with a silver trumpet emblazoned with the Carroll arms, that these bimonthly receptions (which were so delightful) and the brief following call comprised all the visits they were expected to pay at Carroll Farms. And surely, when one considered the great pleasure and also improvement derived from these receptions, the four visits a month at the Farms were worth more than forty times four visits at any other residence in the village or its neighborhood. True, Mrs. Hibbard endeavored to maintain an appearance of importance at her mansion of yellow wood called Chapultepec; but as General Hibbard (of the Mexican War) had now been dead eight years, and as his old house had not been opened for so much as the afternoon sewing society since his departure, its importance, socially considered, existed only in the imagination of his relict—which was, however, in itself quite a domain.

Judith Inches, tall and serious, now brought back the hot dishes, Madam Carroll made the tea (with many pretty little motions and attitudes, which her husband watched), and the meal began. The Major was in excellent spirits. He told stories of Sara's childhood, her obstinacy, her never-failing questions. "She came to me once, Scar," he said, "and announced that Galileo was a humbug. When I asked her why, she said that there was good King David, who knew all about astronomy long before he did; for didn't he say, 'the round world, and they that dwell therein'? We sang it every Sunday. So that proved plain as day that David knew that the world was round, and that it moved, and all about it, of course. Yet here was this old Italian taking everything to himself! Just like Amerigo Vespucci, another old Italian, who had all America named after himself, leaving poor Columbus, the real discoverer, with nothing but 'Hail, Columbia!' to show for it. She announced all this triumphantly and at the top of her voice, from a window; for I was in the garden. When I told her that the word 'round,' upon which all her argument had been founded, was not in the original text, you should have seen how crest-fallen she was. She said she should never sing that chant again."

Scar laughed over this story. He did not laugh often, but when he did, it was a happy little sound, which made every one join in it by its merry glee.

"I am afraid I was a very self-conceited little girl, Scar," his sister said.

As the meal went on, the Major's manner grew all the time more easy. His eyes were no longer restless. His old attention returned, too, in a measure; he kept watch of his wife's plate to ask if she would not have something more; he remembered that Sara preferred bread to the beat biscuit, and placed it near her. The meal ended, they went back to the library. Sara found her old copy of "Good Queen Bertha's Honey-Broth," and she and her father looked at the pictures together, as well as at those of "Robinson Crusoe." Each had its association, a few recalled by him, but many more by her. After Scar had gone to bed, and the books had been laid aside, she still sat there talking to him. She talked of her life at Longfields, telling stories in connection with it—stories not long—bright and amusing. The Major's wife meanwhile sat near them, sewing; she sat with her back to the lamp, in order that the light might fall over her shoulder upon the seam. The light did the work she assigned to it, but it also took the opportunity to play over her curls in all sorts of winsome ways, to gleam on her thimble, to glide down her rosy muslin skirt, and touch her little slipper. She said hardly anything; but, as they talked on, every now and then she looked up appreciatively, and smiled. At last she folded up her work, replacing it in her neat rose-lined work-basket; then she sat still in her low chair, with her feet on a footstool, listening.

The old clock, with its fierce gilt corsair climbing over a glass rock, struck ten.

"Bed-time," said Sara, pausing.