"Go on," said Miss Clendenning. "I understand. You mean that you did not know her."
"No; but I thought her narrow and proud, and that she disliked me for influencing Oliver in his art, and that she wanted to keep him from me and from my ideals. Oh, I've been very, very wicked!"
"Not wicked, my dear—only human. You are not the first woman who did not want to divide a love with a mother."
"But it wasn't exactly that, dear Cousin Lavinia. I had never met anyone who obeyed his mother as Ollie did, and—and—I almost hated her for being his guide and counsel when—oh, not because she did not love him too, just as I did—but because I thought that I could really help him most—because I believed in his talent and she did not, and because I knew all the time that she was ruining him, keeping him back, spoiling his career, and—"
Again she stopped and straightened herself, her beautiful head held higher. Those who knew Margaret well would have known that the worst part of her confession was yet to come.
"I suppose I was hurt too," she said, slowly accentuating each pause with a slight movement of the head. "That I was LITTLE enough and MEAN enough and HORRID enough for that. But he was always talking of his mother as though she never did anything but sit still in that white shawl of hers, listening to music, while everybody waited on her and came to her for advice. And I always thought that she couldn't understand me nor any other woman who wanted to work. When Ollie talked of you all, and of what you did at home, I couldn't help feeling she must think that I and all my people belonged to some different race and that when she saw me she would judge me by some petty thing that displeased her, the cut of my skirt, or the way I carried my hands, or something else equally trivial, and that she would use that kind of thing against me and, perhaps, tell Ollie, too. Father judged Oliver in that way. He thought that Ollie's joyousness and his courtesy, even his way of taking off his hat, and holding it in his two hands for a moment—you've seen him do it a hundred times—was only a proof of his Southern shiftlessness—caring more for manners than for work. Mother didn't; she understood Ollie better, and so did John, but father never could. That's why I wouldn't come when you asked me. You wouldn't have judged me, I know, but I thought that she would. And now—oh, I'm so sorry I could cry."
"It was only another of the mistakes and misunderstandings that divided us all at that time, my dear," Miss Clendenning answered. "This dreadful war could have been averted, if people had only come together and understood each other. I did not think so then, but I do now."
"And you don't think me wicked, Cousin Lavinia?" Margaret asked with a sudden relaxation of her figure and something infinitely childlike and appealing in her tone. "You really don't think me wicked, do you?"
"Not wicked, dear; only human, as I said a moment ago. Yet you have been stronger than I. You have held on and won; I let go and lost."
Margaret bent forward and laid her finger on Miss Clendenning's knee.