Albeit the house was small, and the children noisy, this persecuted grandmother of many homes found herself dreading to leave it and find a new home with her eldest son. John's wife had always been to her a most uncomfortable sort of person; she had dreaded her not frequent visits to their home. Both were glad when they were over. Twenty years had passed since his marriage; she never seemed to get any nearer to his wife. Now the time had come to go and live with them, she shrank from it, and postponed it for weeks, but John was inflexible, he was an upright man, and bound to do his part in sharing the burden of his mother's maintenance.
Mrs. John Kensett was one of those icy women with thin lips and cold grey eyes, made up from the first without a heart—women who make a cool atmosphere about them even in the heat of summer. She was tall and stylish and handsomely dressed, and when she mounted her gold eyeglasses and through them severely looked one over, she was formidable indeed to so meek a woman as her mother-in-law. She must have married John Kensett because an establishment is more complete with a man at the head of it, for that was the chief end of her life to keep all things in perfect running order in that elegantly appointed home, and to keep abreast of the times in all new adornings and furnishings under the sun. One Scripture admonition at least she gave heed to: she looked well to the ways of her household. One might explore from garret to cellar in that house and find nothing out of place, nothing soiled, nothing left undone that should have been done. She was withal, a rigid economist in small things. Everything was kept under lock and key, and doled out in very small quantities to the servants. Her table could never merit the charge of being vulgarly loaded; the furnace heat was never allowed to run above a certain mark on the thermometer, no matter who shivered, and she had doubtless walked miles in turning gas jets to just the right point.
In this most elegant, precise, immaculate house, where everything and everybody was controlled by certain unvarying and inflexible rules, the old mother felt almost as straitened as she ever had in the small topsy-turvy one.
Her room was scarcely above shivering point, and the back windows overlooked no cheerful prospect. Here day after day she sat alone; she had food and shelter and clothes, what more could old people possibly want? At meal times her son was silent and abstracted or absorbed in his newspaper. If anybody had told him that his old mother's heart was nearly breaking for lack of loving sympathy, he would have been astonished. The faded eyes often grew dim with tears as she looked at him—the frigid, unbending man—and remembered him as he was in those first years of her married life, darling little Johnnie in white dresses and long curls, running after butterflies and picking flowers; if he only would kiss her once more, or do something to make her sure that he was Johnnie, she was hungry for a tender word from him. Ah! if mothers could see down the years that stretch ahead, it would not always be so hard to lay the little lisping ones under the ground. Was it decreed that most mothers shall be in sympathy with that other one, of whom it is written, "A sword shall pierce thine, own heart also"?
We shall never know about the wounds from those dear, self-sacrificing mothers, but they are there, even though they may strive to hide them and find excuses for the cold neglect, indifference to their comfort, impatience, and the putting them one side as if to say: "What is all this to you? It is time you were dead."
"John is busy," she would say, as she mounted the stairs to her lonely room, and he buttoned his coat and hastened away to business, without a 'good-bye' or a 'good night,' then she would draw out her knitting and knit on, often through tear-blinded eyes. Sometimes she did not hear a remark the first time and would ask to have it repeated, but the manifest impatience with which it was done always sent a pang well-likened to a sword-thrust, but the dear mother would cover the wound and think within herself, "I know it is a great trouble to talk to deaf people, I ought to keep still."
Strange that these stabs come not alone from the lost sheep of the family, but from the son who is the honoured citizen; from the daughter who shines in her circle as a woman of many virtues; from grandchildren trained up in the Sabbath-school.
"Into each life some sunshine must fall, as well as rain," and Mrs. Kensett had much of hers from Benjie's letters; they were regular as the dew and cheery as the sun, a balsam for the wounds in the poor heart. They were not mere scribbles either—"I am well, and I hope you are; I haven't time to write more now"—but good long letters, with accounts of all his comings and goings, the people he met, the books he read, here a dash of fun and there a poetical fancy; and through them all ran like a golden thread the dear boy's tender love and reverence for his mother. Never did maiden watch for lover's missive with more ardour; sometimes he wrote one day, sometimes another, but always once a week, and Mrs. Kensett kept a sharp look out for the postman; when the time drew near for him to come she made many journeys down the stairs to see if she could get a glimpse of him. When the expected letter was not forthcoming she felt somehow as if the postman were to blame. But when he did come, ah! that was the one bright day of the week; how she read and re-read it, and put it in her pocket and thought it over, while she went on with her knitting, then when some little point was not quite distinct in her mind, brought it out and read it again, so that by the time another one came this one was worn out. John's wife thought to regulate this one small pleasant excitement of her mother-in-law's life by remarking to her husband that "somebody ought to tell Benjamin to write on a particular day, mother was so fidgety when it was time for the mail."
How small a thing is a letter to make one happy! and yet some of us let the sword pierce the dear mother heart by withholding that which costs us so little. God pity us when our mothers are gone beyond the reach of voice or pen.
One day her letter contained news of great importance. It was read and pondered long. Benjie was going to be married! The mother did not like the news; somehow in all her plans for Benjie the wife had not come in. Now this would be the last of her comfort in him; he would marry and settle down, and probably be just like John—given up to business. He pictured out his future bride as good and lovely. Of course he thought so, but poor Mrs. Kensett could get no vision of a daughter-in-law except a tall woman with severe expression. "She is an heiress," Benjie wrote. Well, what of that? John's wife had property too. She would likely be proud, and ashamed of a plain old woman like her.