One other thing, too, I must tell in my defense. I was pushed in. A dearer and more devoted mother than mine no girl ever had. But this I will dare to say—and I am old enough to know—I do believe every true mother-heart has, somewhere in its great expanse, a cavity that aches, never to be filled till some one who loves her daughter comes to dwell there evermore, bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh by the great adoption of their united love. Two streams, both different—but the confluence is mighty. And then there is another cavity, farther in, its ache more poignant still—and that place is never filled, that pain never banished, till she scans some baby face, her leaping heart descrying the likeness to her own, all the lovelier because the image of the adopted mingles with it.
I am right well aware how horrified my mother would have been if any one had dared to hint that she, or any other gentlewoman, cherished the hope of some day being either mother-in-law or grandmother—or both; and I cannot help a little shudder as I write those terms myself. But the truth as I first set it down, free from those rude bald words, is not to be denied.
It was at the seaside that I first met Charlie Giddens. Mother and I met him the same evening, in the midst of a merry dance on the grand piazza. He was tall and dark, and his hair was gloriously rebellious, every way for Sunday. We both noticed that he looked at us a little long, a little earnestly, I thought—but he asked mother to dance first, and that's where his head was level.
"Don't fill your program all up, Helen," she whispered as she handed me her fan, gliding out with the tall figure, so handsome in his spotless ducks.
"Did you notice how gracefully he handed me to my seat?" mother said after he had left her; "he has the manners of a cavalier." For the old-time Southern lady puts gracefulness next to grace.
"He dances like a Dervish of the Desert," I remarked, a little maliciously perhaps—for he had bowed and left us.
"Like a courtier, you mean," my mother amended, her eyes still following him. "And his father's a ship owner in Savannah, and his mother comes from one of the oldest families in South Carolina," concluded my mother, naming the ancient house.
"That's why you like his dancing," I suggested; "old families all dance exquisitely—the older, the sprightlier, it seems."
"He has such a delicate way of putting things," pursued my mother; "he was describing his mother to me, and he said she had a lovely figure, just about my size," surveying somewhat hopefully her rather substantial form the while. For this was a very live issue with my mother; she lived in daily horror of growing stout, and any such reassuring word was balm of Gilead to her.
But what's the use of going on with this? This story's main concern is not with my dancing days, and what I have written, or yet shall write, regarding them, is only a streamlet leading towards the river of my life. And my story—if it be ever finished, or however far it roam, must follow the winding current of my changeful years.