“YOUR mother was very young,” Mr. Fielding continued, “and early matured as marriage makes a girl. She was a little old-fashioned, I think, as well as I can remember, through being driven into maturity before her time. When a girl is married, not over happily——”
“Was her marriage not happy?” Edgar interrupted, with a cloud on his face.
“I should not have said that. I mean, you know, her being so young. Why, I don’t think she was as old as Clare when they came back here with you a baby——”
“I was born abroad,” said Edgar, half in the tone of one making an inquiry, half as asserting a fact.
“If you would try not to interrupt me, please,” said Mr. Fielding, piteously. “You put me off my story. Yes, you were born abroad. They came home in October, and you had been born in the end of the previous year. They took everybody a good deal by surprise. In the first place, few people knew there was a baby; and no one knew when your father and mother were coming. There were no bells rung for you, Edgar, when you came home first, and the old wives have a notion—but never mind that.”
“Tell me the notion,” said Edgar.
“Oh, nothing—about mischief to the heir for whom no bells are rung. That’s all; and heaven be praised, no mischief has come to you, Edgar. They came quite suddenly and the baby. Your father never made a fuss about babies. That is to say, my dear boy,” said the old Rector, lowering his voice, “if it will not grieve you; from the very beginning that had begun.”
Edgar gave a little nod of his head, sudden and brief, understanding only too clearly; and Mr. Fielding stopped to grasp his hand, and then went on again.
“If I could have helped it, I would not have mentioned it; but, of course, it must be referred to now and then,” continued the Rector. “Instead of being proud of you, as a man, if he is good for anything, always is, he never seemed able to bear the fuss. To be sure, some men don’t. They will not be made second even for their own child. Your mother——”
“My mother was fond of me at least?” said Edgar, turning away his head, and cutting at the weeds with the light cane in his hand, doing his best to conceal his excitement and emotion.
“Your mother, poor child!—but that of course, that of course, Edgar; how could she be otherwise than fond of her first-born? Your mother’s entire life was absorbed in an attempt to satisfy her husband. I saw the whole process; and it made my heart bleed. She was a passive, gentle, little creature—not like him. She shrank from the world, and all that was going on in it. She liked melancholy books and sad songs, and all that—one of the creatures doomed to die young. And he was so different! She used to strain and strain her faculties trying to please him. She would try to amuse him even in her innocent way. It was very hard upon her, Edgar. You are an active, restless sort of being yourself; but, for heaven’s sake, don’t worry your wife when you get one. Let her follow her own constitution a little. She tried and tried till she could strive no longer: and when Clare was born, I think she was quite glad to be obliged to give in, and get a little rest in her grave. Of course, she was not here all the time. They used to come and go, and never stayed more than a month or two. You were left behind very often. The Doctor never saw her,” Mr. Fielding added pointedly, “till just before she died. He had newly come back and got settled in his house. He never saw her but on her death-bed. He knew nothing about her; but I—you may think I am bragging like a garrulous old talker as I am—but I saw a great deal of her one way or another. I think she felt she had a friend in me.”
“Thanks!” Edgar said below his breath. He was too deeply moved to look at his old friend, nor could he trust himself to speak.
“I buried her,” said the old clergyman in his musing way. “You know the place. It was all I could do to keep from crying loud out like a child. I lost my own wife the same way; but the child died too. That is one reason, perhaps, why I am so fond of Clare. When you come to think of it, Edgar, this world is a dreary place to live so long in. A year or two’s brightness you may have, and then the long, long, steady twilight that never changes. They are saved a great deal when they die early. What with her natural weakness, and what with you, it would have been hard upon her had she lived. However, it is lucky for us that life and death are not in our power.”
“I hate myself for thinking of myself when you have been telling me of—her,” said Edgar. “But—my fate, it appears, was the same from the beginning. It could not arise from anything—found out?”
“There was nothing that could be found out,” Mr. Fielding answered, almost severely. “Your mother was as good a woman as ever lived—too good. If she had been less tender and less gentle it would have been better for her—and for her son as well. Yes, there is such a thing as being too good.”
“Am I like her?” said Edgar suddenly, looking for the first time in the Rector’s face.
Mr. Fielding looked at him with critical gravity, which by-and-bye melted into a smile. “If black and white put together ever produced red,” he said, “I should be able to understand you, Edgar. But I can’t somehow. It must be one of the old Ardens asserting his right to be represented; that sometimes occurs in an old family; some great-grandfather tired of letting the other side of the house have it all their own way; for you know that dark beauty came in with the Spanish lady in Queen Elizabeth’s time. You must be like your mother in your disposition—for you are not a bit of an Arden. The difference is that you don’t take things to heart much—and she did.”
“Don’t I take things much to heart?”
“My dear boy, you ought to know better than I do. I should not think you did. The world comes more easily to you; and then, a man—and a young man in your position—can’t be kept down as she was. I am not blaming your father, Edgar. He meant no harm. To him it seemed quite proper and natural. Men should mind when they have a life and soul to deal with; but they never do until it is too late. Yes, of course, you are like her,” Mr. Fielding added; “I can see the marks of her bonds upon you. She taught herself to give in, and submit, and prefer another’s will to her own; and you do that same for your diversion, because you like it. Yes, my boy, you carry the marks of her bonds—you are the son of her heart.”
“That is a delusion,” said Edgar. “I always please myself.” But he was soothed by the kind speech of the old man, who was a friend to him, as he had been to his mother, and her story had moved him very deeply. She, too, had suffered like himself. “Thanks for telling me so much,” he added, humbly. “I never heard anything about her before. And Clare has a little picture, which she showed me. I have been thinking a very great deal about her for the last two or three days.”
“What has made you think of her more than usual?” asked Mr. Fielding, with some sharpness. Edgar paused, unwilling to answer. It seemed to him that the Rector knew or divined how it was. He had made several allusions to the Doctor, as if contradicting beforehand an adverse authority. But Edgar felt it impossible to allow that he had heard of any suspicion against his mother. He made a dash into indifferent subjects—the management of the estate, the building of the new cottages. Mr. Fielding was not deceived: but he was judicious enough to allow the conversation to be turned into another channel, and on this subject to ask no more.