For the Major: A Novelette

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

"No, it was not that; I could have borne much more. I have borne it. But what I could not bear was that he should be ill. I had exhausted every means I had when he went away the first time; there was nothing left. I had given all I had—all, excepting things which the Major himself had given me. I had even stretched a point, and added the watch your uncle Mr. Chase sent me when I was married. There was the little breast-pin, also, that Mrs. Upton gave me at the same time. Then there was the gold thimble and the sleeve-buttons you sent me from Longfields, and the gold pencil Senator Ashley gave me one Christmas. I even put in my little coral necklace. It had belonged to Cecilia, and was the only thing I had left from her baby days; it was of little, almost no value intrinsically, as I knew, because I had tried to sell it more than once when she and I were so poor; but if it could add even a few shillings to the hoard—so small!—that was to take him back to the climate he needed, I was glad to have it go. I tell you this only to show you that absolute necessity, and that alone, drove me to you."

"I am so glad you came, mamma!—glad that I was able to help you, or at least that you let me try."

"Yes, you were glad to help me; you were very kind and good," answered the Major's wife. Then, sitting erect, and with a quicker utterance, "But you were always afraid of him. You never trusted him. You were always afraid that he would be traitorous, that he would go to your father, I was never afraid; I knew that he would never betray; he cared too much for me, for his poor mother; for although he had not been with me since he was a child, in his way he loved me. He was never selfish, he was only unthinking, my poor, neglected boy! But you never gave him any mercy; you suspected him to the last."

"Oh, no, mamma; I tried—"

"Yes, you tried. But you were always Miss Carroll, always scornful at heart, cold. You endured him; that was all. And do not think he did not see it, was not hurt by it! But I did not mean to reproach you, Sara; it is not just. I will stop this minute." She brought one hand down into the palm of the other with a decided little sound, and held them thus pressed tightly together for several minutes. Then, letting them fall apart, she leaned her head back against the cushions again. "You were thinking of your father," she said, in a gentler tone; "that was the cause of all, of your coldness, your fear. You were afraid that Julian would do something to distress him, to disturb his peace. But he would never have done that. You did not know him, Sara; you never in the least comprehended him. But I must not keep going back to that. Rather tell me—and speak truthfully, it can make no difference now—do you think there was any time, after my poor boy's first coming, when we could have safely told the Major?"

"No," answered the Major's daughter, "there was no time. He could not have borne it; the surprise, the shock, would have been too great."

"So it seemed to me. But I wanted your opinion too. You see, about me there is more than there used to be in his mind, or, rather, in his fancy: he doesn't distinguish. What were once surmises he now thinks facts, and he fully believes in them. He has constructed a sort of history, and has woven in all sorts of imaginary theories in the most curious way. For instance, he thinks that my mother was one of a family well known in New York—so they tell me, at least; I know little of New York—the Forsters of Forster's Island. My mother was plain Mary Foster, from Chester, Vermont, or its neighborhood, a farmer's daughter. In the same way he has built up a belief that my father was an Episcopal clergyman, and that he was educated in England. My father was a Baptist missionary; he was a man of fair education (he educated me), but he was never in England in his life. These are only parts of it, his late fancies about me. To have brushed them all away, to have told him that they were false, that I had all along been deceiving him, to have bewildered him, given him so much pain—my dear gray-haired old Major! Oh, Sara, I could never have done it! 'A son?' he would have said, perplexed. 'But there is only little Scar.' It would have been cruelty, he believes in me so!" Her voice quivered, and she stopped.

"He has never had more cause to believe in you than now, mamma—to believe in your love for him; he does not know it, but some day he will. You have been so unswerving in your determination to make secure, first of all, his happiness and tranquillity, so unmindful of your own pain, that it seems to me, his daughter, as if you had never been so faithful a wife to him as now."

"Oh, say it again!" said Madam Carroll, burying her face in her hands. "I did my best, or at least I tried; but I have been so—tortured—harassed—"

The Major stirred in the next room; they hurried softly in. He was awake; he turned his head and looked at his wife as she stood beside the bed. "You and Sara both here?" he said. "Did I go to bed, then, very early this evening?" He did not wait for reply, but went on. "I have had such a beautiful dream, Marion; it was about that drive we took when we were first married—do you remember? Through the woods near Mayberry. There was that same little stream that we had to cross so many times, and the same bank where you got out and gathered wild violets, and the same spring where we drank, and that broken bridge where you were so frightened—do you remember?"