“Oh! no, dear; I did not expect you any sooner.”
Mrs. Gerald lingered in the doorway, looking back at her son as he stopped to leave his hat and overcoat in the entry, and only entered the sitting-room when she had caught a glimpse of his face as he came toward her. He was looking pleasant, she saw, and was contented with that.
“Well, mother!” he said, and sank indolently into the arm-chair she pushed before the open fire for him. It was the only arm-chair in the room.
She drew another chair forward, and seated herself beside him. Honora, sitting on a low stool in the corner, with the firelight shining over her, told what they had been doing that afternoon and evening. The son listened, his eyes fixed on the fire; the mother listened, her eyes fixed on her son.
Mrs. Gerald was an Irish lady of good descent, well educated, and well mannered, and had seen better days. We do not call them better days because in her girlhood and early married life this lady had been wealthy, but because she had been the happy daughter of excellent parents, and the happy wife of a good man. All were gone now but this son; the husband dead for many a year, the daughters married and far away, the wealth melted from her like sunset gold from a cloud; but Lawrence was left, and he filled her heart.
One could read this in her face as she watched him. It revealed the pride of the mother in that beautiful manhood which she had given to the world, and which was hers by an inalienable right that no one could usurp; and it revealed, too, the entire self-forgetfulness of the woman who lives only in the life so dear to her. The face showed more yet; for, hovering over this love and devotion as the mist of the coming storm surrounds the full moon, and rings its softened brightness with a tremulous halo, one could detect even in the mother’s smile the mist of a foreboding sadness.
How ineffable and without hope is that sadness which is ever the companion of a too exclusive affection!
Honora Pembroke looked at the two, and pain and indignation, and the necessity for restraining any expression of either, swelled in her heart, painted her cheeks a deep red, and lifted her lids with a fuller and more scornful gaze than those soft eyes were wont to give. Where was the courtesy which any man, not rudely insensible, should show to a lady? Where the grateful tenderness that any child, not cruelly ungrateful, pays to a mother? This man could be gallant when he wished to make a favorable impression; and she had heard him make very pretty, if very senseless, speeches about chivalry and ideal characters, as if he knew what they were. He had even, in the early days of their acquaintance, maintained for a long time an irreproachable demeanor in her presence. She was learning a doubt and distrust of men, judging them by this one, of whom she knew most. Were they often as selfish and insensible as he was? Were they incapable of being affected by any enchantment except that which is lent by a delusive distance? Here beside him was an ideal affection, and he accepted it as he accepted air and sunshine—it was a matter of course. The mother was in person one who might satisfy even such a fastidious taste as his; for though the face was thin and faded, and the hands marred by household labor, there were still the remains of what had once been a striking beauty. Mrs. Gerald carried her tall form with undiminished stateliness, her coal-black hair had not a single thread of white among its thick tresses, and her deep-blue eyes had gained in tenderness what they had lost in fire. To use one of Miss Pembroke’s favorite expressions, it was not fitting that the son, after having passed a day without fatigue, should lounge at ease among cushions, while the mother, to whom every evening brought weariness, should sit beside him in a chair of penitential hardness.
But even while she criticised him, he looked up from the fire, his face brightening with a sudden pleasant recollection.
“O mother! I had almost forgotten,” he said, and began searching in his pockets for something. “Neither you nor Honora mentioned it; but I keep count, and I know that to-day your ladyship is five times ten years old.”