“I think you are wrong in that,” was the unexpected answer. “When one has acted rightly to the very best of one’s power, it is of no use worrying about consequences.”
“How do you mean?” asked Archie, very much surprised at the decided tone in which Nan spoke. He had thought her too soft in manners to possess much energy and determination of character; but he was mistaken.
“It would be far worse if your sister had not recognized her duty and refused to remain at home. One cannot find happiness if one moves out of one’s allotted niche; but of course you know all this better than I, being a clergyman. And, oh! how beautifully you spoke to us last Sunday!” finished Nan, remembering all at once that she was usurping his place and preaching a little sermon of her own.
“Never mind that,” he replied, impatiently: “tell me what you mean. There is something behind your speech: you think I am wrong in pitying poor Grace so much?” 179
“If you ask me so plainly, I must say yes, though perhaps I am not competent to judge; but, from what you tell me, I think you ought not to pity her at all. She is fulfilling her destiny. Is she not doing the work given her to do? and what can any girl want more? You should trust your mother, I think, Mr. Drummond; for she would not willingly overwork her. Mothers are mothers: you need not be afraid,” said Nan, looking up in her clear honest way.
“Thank you; you have taken a weight off my mind,” returned Archie, more moved by this than he cared to own. That last speech had gone home: he must trust his mother. In a moment scales seemed to fall from the young man’s eyes as he walked along gravely, and silently by Nan. “Why, what manner of girls could these be?” he thought; “frolicsome as kittens, and yet possessing the wisdom of mature womanhood?” And those few simple words of Nan abided long with him.
What if he and Grace were making a mistake, and there was no hardship in her case at all, but only clear duty, and a most high privilege, as Nan hinted? What if his mother were right, and only they were wrong?
The idea was salutary, but hardly pleasant; for he had certainly aided and abetted Grace in her discontent, and had doubtless increased her repinings at her dull surroundings. Surely Grace’s talents had been given her for a purpose; else why was she so much cleverer than the others,—so gifted with womanly accomplishments? And that clear head of hers,—she had a genius for teaching, he had never denied that. Was his mother, a sensible large-sighted woman in her way, to be secretly condemned as a tyrant, and wanting in maternal tenderness for Grace, because she had made use of this gifted daughter for the good of her other children, and had refused to part with her at Archie’s request?
Archie began to feel uncomfortable, for conscience was waxing warm within him; and there had been a grieved hurt tone in his mother’s letters of late, as though she had felt herself neglected by him.
“Mothers are mothers: you need not be afraid,” Nan had said, with simple wholesome faith in the instincts of motherhood; and the words had come home to him with the strongest power.