For the Major: A Novelette

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"It seemed to me such a wonderful thing that he should love me! It gave me such a strange surprise that he should care for my little doll-like face and curls. But when I found that he did care for them, how precious they became to me, how hard I tried to keep them pretty for his sake! And, for his sake, I not only kept them pretty, but I made them prettier. I was a far prettier woman after the Major married me than I was before; I had a motive to be so. Ah, yes, I loved him, Sara! May you never have a comprehension of the ill-usage, the suffering, I had been through! but still, without such knowledge, you will hardly be able to understand the depth of my love for him. When he first saw me, I was making an effort to seem comparatively cheerful; I was spending a few weeks with Mrs. Upton, the wife of an army officer, at Mayberry, and I did not want her to suspect my inward despair. Mrs. Upton had known me at Natchez while I was trying to keep a little school there, and when I came to Mayberry to try again, she asked me to come and spend a few weeks with her before I began. She knew that I was poor—she did not know how poor—and she had always been fond of Cecilia, who was—surely I may say it now—a very beautiful child. Think of it all, Sara; remember the needs of the child; remember what he was himself, and—that I loved him."

"I do think of it. And I do not blame you," Sara Carroll answered, speaking not as the daughter, but as one woman speaks to another. "You have made my father's life a very happy one."

"I have tried; but it has always been in my own narrow way, the little things of each day and hour. It was the only way I knew."

There was a silence; the room had grown dark, as a broad bank of cloud came slowly over the moon.

"Cecilia is with her brother to-night," said Madam Carroll, after a while; "Cecilia is a woman now, a woman in heaven. She was twenty-two on the 11th of September. I wonder what they are saying to each other! He used to be so fond of her, so proud when I let him hold her for a few minutes in his strong little arms! They will be sure to meet and talk together; don't you think so?"

"How can we know, mamma?" said Sara, sadly.

"We cannot. Yet we do," answered Madam Carroll. "I know it; I am sure of it." She was silent for a moment; then went on speaking softly in the darkness, as if half to herself. "His poor clothes, Sara—oh, so neglected and worn!—I could not bear it when I saw them. I had asked him about them more than once, and he always said that they were in good order—that is, good enough. But I pressed him; I wanted to see with my own eyes; and at last I succeeded in persuading him to bring a few of them late in the evening when no one would see him, and put them under the hedge near the gate; then, when everybody was asleep, I stole down to get them, took them into the sitting-room, lighted the lamp, and looked at them. In 'good order' he had called them, poor boy, when they were almost rags. I cried over those clothes, Sara; I could not help it; they were the only tears I shed. It showed so plainly what his life had been. I could not help remembering in what careful order were all his little frocks and jackets when he was my dear little child. After that I made him bring me a few things once a week. I gave him a little old carpet-bag of mine to put them in. I used to mend them in my dressing-room, with the door locked, whenever I had a little leisure (I took only my leisure), and then I carried them down and put them under the hedge when I knew he was coming. It was a comfort to me to do it; but he didn't care anything about the mending himself—he said so. He had lived so long with his poor things neglected and ragged that he didn't know any other way. Yet he tried, too, after his fashion—a man's fashion—to dress well. Don't you remember his red silk handkerchiefs and socks, and his silk-lined umbrella? Poor boy, he had the wish; but not the money or the knowledge. How could he learn, living where and as he had? That watch-chain and ring he had when he came back—they were only gilt."

The grieving story was no longer uttered aloud, the low tones ceased. But the mother was pursuing the train of thought in her own mind.

After a while she spoke again. "I was so unwilling to tell you, Sara, to burden you with it all! Nothing could have made me do it but the fear of—of that which afterwards did happen—death. For when he came back after that illness, and I saw how changed he was, how weak, and knew that I had nothing to help him with, then I felt desperate. I knew that he ought to return to that warmer climate, and at once; I had nothing of my own, and the Major's money, of course, I would not take. Yours is not his, and so I came to you; I knew that you would help me to the utmost of your power—as you have. But if there had been any possible alternative, anything else in the world that I could have done—and I thought over everything—I want you to believe that I should never have come to you."

"It was too much for you to bear alone, mamma."