IX
When Eugenia went upstairs that night she softly opened Lottie's door and glanced into the room. By the sinking firelight she saw Lottie lying asleep, her hand upon the pillow of her younger child, who slept beside her. The pretty, nerveless hand, even in sleep, tremored like a caress, for whatever Lottie's wifely failings, as a mother she was without reproach. Lottie—vain, hysterical, bewailing her wrongs—was the same Lottie now resting with a protecting arm thrown out—this Eugenia admitted thoughtfully as she looked into the darkened room where the thin blue flame cast a spectral light upon the sleepers. From this shallow rooted nature had bloomed the maternal ardour of the Southern woman, in whom motherhood is the abiding grace.
Eugenia closed the door and crossed the hall to Miss Chris, who was reading her Bible as she seeded raisins into a small yellow bowl. The leaves of the Bible were held open by her spectacle case which she had placed between them; for while her hands were busy with material matters her placid eyes followed the text.
"I thought I'd get these done to-night," she remarked as Eugenia entered. "I'm going to make a plum pudding for Dudley to-morrow. Where is he now?"
"A political barbecue, I believe," responded Eugenia indifferently as she knotted the cord of her flannel dressing-gown. She yawned and threw herself into a chair. "I wonder why everybody spoils Dudley so," she added. "Even I do it. I am sitting up for him to-night simply because I know he'll want to tell me about it all when he comes in."
"It's a good habit for a wife to cultivate," returned Miss Chris, shaking the raisins together. "If my poor father stayed out until four o'clock in the morning he found my mother up and dressed when he came in."
"I should say it was 'poor' grandmamma," commented Eugenia drily. "But Dudley won't find me after midnight." Then she regarded Miss Chris affectionately. "What a blessing that you didn't marry, Aunt Chris," she said. "You'd have prepared some man to merit damnation."
"My dear Eugie," protested Miss Chris, half shocked, half flattered at the picture. "But you're a good wife, all the same, like your mother before you. The only fault I ever saw in poor Meely was that she wouldn't put currants in her fruit cake. Tom was always fond of currants—" in a moment she abruptly recalled herself. "My dear, I don't say you haven't had your trials," she went on. "Dudley isn't a saint, but I don't believe even the Lord expects a man to be that. It doesn't seem to set well on them."
"Oh, I am not blaming Dudley," returned Eugenia as leniently as Miss Chris. "We live and let live—only our tastes are different. Why, the chief proof of his affection for me is that he always describes to me the object of his admiration—which means that his eyes stray, but his heart does not, and the heart's the chief thing, after all."