I had been trying to persuade her not to whiten the front-door step, which is of cool grey stone. She appears to regard it in the same light as a kitchen-hearth bestowed by a bountiful Providence. She smears it with wet donkey-stone, and when dry it gleams and scintillates in the hot sun with dazzling intensity. Then she attacks the scraper, which she polishes with a black-lead brush till it resembles the kitchen kettle after "siding up." You cannot prevent Amelia from "siding up." Every now and again she "sides up" me. She says my hair is untidy and approaches me with a brush. She suggests that the wearing of a pearl necklace round my throat, the collar of which is cut low for comfort, would smarten me up. She picks up my slippers, which I have kicked on to the grass, and compels me to put them on in case I have callers.
She constantly threatens me with these callers. She dangles them in front of me when I am idling with The Vicar of Wakefield, and offers to bring me my best hat, as "that Liberty garden thing is shabby and old-fashioned." She thinks the vicar may call. He has been laid up for some weeks; but he is better, and it is his bounded duty to call to see a poor sick lady.
I gently bring her back to the discussion of the step, and after some stubbornness on her part she asks if I would like it done like the Tompkinses'. Knowing that the Tompkinses are superior people, indulging in "hoary doves" at their dinner, I say "Yes" without any further parley, trusting to their good taste.
Mother is coming to-morrow, and I know just how she is feeling about me. She will be thinking if ever her daughter Marguerite wanted her it will be now—now, when she is lonely and tired and without Dimbie. Her dear face will be brimful of joy at being wanted by anyone, and at the prospect of getting away from Peter. She would not own up to the last. If ever there was a loyal, patient soul in this world it is mother. She won't allow herself to believe that Peter is selfish and domineering. He is her husband, and with a wavering curve of her sweet lips she pronounces him as just tiresome.
And, best of all, I know she will like being here without Dimbie. She likes him, she admires him, but she is secretly jealous of him. I believe I should be too if I had a daughter married. When a child gives herself into somebody else's keeping the mother is dethroned; the child—always a child in the mother's eyes—takes her joys and sorrows to her husband. He bandages the little cut leg, figuratively speaking, kisses the crushed fingers, wipes away the tears of sorrow. The mother has to take a back seat, and her heart is sore. When Dimbie and I, in the short days of our engagement, would try to slip away to another room, to be by ourselves, I have seen mother close her eyes and heard her give a little gasping sigh. She would smile bravely when her eyes caught mine, but I had heard the sigh, and though my heart ached at the thought of leaving her alone with Peter, I was unable to keep the happiness away from my own eyes and voice. Poor little mother! It is hard, but it was ever thus. You left your mother, and I in turn have left you. It is one of Nature's edicts—cruel it may seem, but not to be resisted. Were Dimbie to call, I should follow him to the end of the world, I know.
But during the days mother is with me I mean to let her have it all her own way. I shall pretend that Dimbie is dethroned. I shall not talk of him; at least, I shall try with unusual strength not to speak of him, beyond mentioning the bare fact that he is well and ministering to the wants of Aunt Letitia.
And we shall also not talk of Peter more than we can possibly help. Long ago we decided that Peter must be a tabooed subject between us.
"We might be led into saying things about your father which we ought not to say," mother had implied without putting it into so many words, and I had nodded.
"Besides, he might—he might have been so much worse."
I fear I looked doubtful about this point, for she added quickly, "He doesn't steal."