A Reconstructed Marriage Part 30

"I consider your behavior abominable. It is an outrage on your mother's love and honor."

"Theodora trusted you, and you allowed a lot of vulgar, unscrupulous women to ransack her trunks, wear her new dresses dirty, and spoil all they touched, and carry away with them neckwear and jewelry they had no right to touch. I will not give them so much opportunity to injure me.

You ought not to wish me to do so."

"Christina Campbell, your behavior is beyond all excuse, it is almost beyond all forgiveness. Isabel, tell your sister her duty."

Then Isabel said in a slow, positive voice: "I think Christina is right.

You know, mother, the Campbelton people will come to the marriage, and after Christina has gone, who will be able to restrain them? Not you. It is quite certain that they ruined poor Dora's home-coming, and made her begin her life here, at sixes and sevens."

"Poor Dora! What do you mean?"

"I mean, mother, that the opening of her trunks, and the use of her clothing was a shameful thing. I have often said so, and I will always say so."

"Do not dare to say it to me again. I will not listen to such nonsense, and as for you, Christina Campbell, you are an ungrateful child, and you are c.o.c.king your head too high, and somewhat too early. Wait until you are Lady Wynton, before you put on ladyship airs."

"Look you, mother, once and for all time, my trunks are not coming near Traquair House. I am as good as married, and I will not be ordered about like a child; it is out of the question."

"_Dod!_ but you are full of bouncing, swaggering words. And what good girl ever sent her bridal clothes away, without letting her mother see them? What in heaven and earth will you do next?"

"I shall be delighted, if you will come with me to Madame Bernard's rooms this morning. I have asked you frequently to do so. You always refuse."

"I intended to examine them here, at my leisure."

"And as to what I shall do next, you will see that very shortly. I am very sorry, mother, to disappoint you, but after I am married you can see me wearing the dresses, and----"

"I do not wish to see them at all now."

"Very well."

"All your life, until lately, you have been a good obedient daughter; the change in you is the work of that wicked, wicked woman Dora Newton."

"All my life until lately, I was kept in a state of nothingness--but I am no longer a nonent.i.ty. I have come into a human existence, and you are right, it is Dora Campbell's doing, and I wish I knew how to thank her."

"It would be thanking the devil, for teaching you to sin."

"Mother, you are spoiling my day, and I have a great deal to do.

Good-morning, or will you come with me?"

"I will not come one footstep with you. How can you expect it?"

At these words Christina left the room, and Mrs. Campbell began a complaint ill.u.s.trated by sobs, and sighs, and intermittent tears. She told Isabel that all the pleasure she expected from her child's marriage had been taken from her. She confessed that she had spoken a little to many people of the rich and beautiful presents Christina had received, and now she would not be able to show one of them; and no one would believe what she had said--and she could not blame people if they did not. "Oh, Isabel!" she cried, "for my sake, and for all our sakes, Christina must send her trunks here for a week or two. Do try and persuade her. She always listens to you."

"It is quite useless, mother; she has made up her mind to send them to her new home. I rather think some have gone there already, for two weeks ago there were eight trunks at madame's, and last week I only saw three."

"Why did you not tell me? Oh, why did you not give me a chance to persuade the cruel, selfish girl? So wrong! So wicked! So ungrateful!

You know, Isabel, I gave her five hundred pounds to buy that very clothing--I had a right to see it--yes, I had--I had--and it is shameful!"

"Mother, you could have gone with Christina to her dressmaker's. You could not expect her to bring all her things here, they would certainly have been shown and handled--they might have been ill-used as Dora's pretty clothes were. Oh, mother, I do not blame Christina at all! I think she acted for the best."

"So you also are joining the enemy--getting Newtonized like Christina.

Do you also hope to become a beauty, and a belle, and marry a baronet?"

"Mother, you are throwing sarcasm away. I have no hopes left for myself.

It is too late for me to develop in any direction."

"Whose fault is that?"

"Destiny's fault, I suppose. I was nursing the sick, when I ought to have been in school and in society."

Mrs. Campbell did not answer this reproach. Destiny was a good enough apology. No one could thwart Destiny. She at least was not to blame for the wrongs of Destiny. She sat dourly still and silent, the very image of resentful disappointment. The silence was indeed so profound, that one could hear the pa.s.sage of Isabel's needle through the silk she was sewing, and for ten minutes both women maintained the att.i.tude they had taken.

Then Isabel--holding her needle poised ready for the next st.i.tch--looked at her mother. Her expression of hopeless defeat was pathetic, and her silent, motionless endurance of it, touched Isabel's heart as tears and complaints never could have done. She rose and, taking her mother's dropped hand, said:

"Never mind, mother. You will often see Christina wearing her fineries in her grand new home. That will be far better than taking them out of a trunk to look at."

"Isabel, I care nothing about seeing them. I wanted to show them. People will never believe she got all I said she did."

"Why should you care whether they believe it or not? And why not pay the newspapers to make a notice of them. They will send some youngster here to item them, and you can give him a sovereign, and a gla.s.s of wine, and then you can give Christina all the wonderfuls you like--even to the half, or the whole, of Sir Thomas Wynton's estate."

"That is the plan, Isabel. I'm glad you thought of it."

"Robert is gey fond of a newspaper notice. He'll pay the sovereign without a grumble."

"I'm sure you are an extraordinar' comfort, Isabel."

"And I thought you were going to order the wedding cake this morning.

There is really no time to lose, mother."

"You are right, Isabel, and I must just put back my own sair heartache and look after the ungrateful, thrawart woman's wedding cake. It's untelling what I have done for Christina, and the upsetting ways o' her this morning and the words she said, I'll never forget. I shall come o'er them in my mind as long as I live; and I'll tell her what I think of her behavior, whenever I find a proper opportunity."

"Very well, mother. Tell her flatly your last thought; it will be the best way."

"I will."

"But do go about the cake at once. It is important, and there's none but yourself will be heeded."

Then with a long, deep sigh, she went slowly out of the room, and Isabel watched her affected weakness and indifference with a kind of scornful pity. For women see through women, know intuitively their little tricks and make-beliefs, and for this very reason a daughter's love for her mother--however devoted and self-sacrificing--lacks that something of mystical worship which a son feels for his mother. The daughter knows she wears false hair and false teeth and pink and white powder; the son simply takes her as she looks and thinks "what a lovely mother I have!"

The daughter has watched her mother's little schemes for happy household management, and probably helped her in them; the son knows only their completed comfort and their personal pleasure. He never dreams of any policy or management in his mother's words and deeds, and hence he believes in her just as he sees and hears her. And her wisdom and love seem to him so great and so unusual, that an element of reverence--the highest feeling of which man is capable--blends itself with all his conceptions of mother. And the wonder is, that a daughter's love exists, and persists, without it. Knowing all her mother's feminine weaknesses, she loves her devotedly in spite of them--nay, perhaps loves her the more profoundly because of them. And if she is not capable of this affection she does not love her at all.

Isabel watched her mother leave the house on the wedding cake business and then she went to her sister's room. She found her dressing to go out. "I have an appointment at eleven, Isabel," she said, "and I am so glad you have come to sit beside me while I dress. The days are going so fast, and very soon now you will come to my room, and Christina will not be here, any more in this life."

"You will surely come back to your own home sometimes, Christina?"

"No. I shall never enter Traquair House again, unless you are sick and need me--then I would come. I have just been going through my top drawer, Isabel; it was full of old gifts and keepsakes, and I declare they brought tears to my eyes."

"Why? I dare say the givers have forgotten you--they were mostly school friends, and the Campbelton crowd."

"Do you think I had a tear for any of them? No, no! I was nearly crying for myself, for it was really piteous to see the trash a woman of my age thought worth preserving. I sent the whole contents of the drawer to the kitchen--the servant la.s.ses may quarrel about them."