The Fortunes of Oliver Horn Part 30

Mrs. Horn kept still for a moment, looking on the floor. Oliver sat watching her face.

"And your family, my son," she protested with a certain patient disapproval in her tones. "Do they count for nothing? I, of course, would love anybody you would make your wife, but you have others about you. No man has a right to marry beneath him. Do not be in a hurry over this matter. Come home for your wife when you are ready to marry. Give yourself time to compare this girl, who seems to have fascinated you, with--Sue, for instance, or any of the others you have been brought up with."

Oliver shrugged his shoulders at the mention of Sue's name. He had compared her.

"You would not talk this way, dearie; if you could see her," he replied in a hopeless way as if the futility of making his mother understand was now becoming apparent to him. "She is different from anyone you ever met--she is so strong, so fine--such a woman in all that the word means. Not something you fondle and make love to, remember, but a woman more like a Madonna that you worship, or a Greek G.o.ddess that you might fear. As to the family part of it, I am getting tired of it all, mother. What good is Grandfather Horn or anybody else to me? I have got to dig my way out just as they did. Just as dear old Dad is doing. If he succeeds in his work who will help him but himself? There have been times when I used to love to remember him sitting by his reading-lamp or with his violin tucked under his chin, and I was proud to think he was my father. Do you know what sets my blood on fire now? It is when I think of him standing over his forge and blowing his bellows, his hands black with coal. I understand many things, dearie, that I knew nothing about when I left home. You used to tell me yourself that everybody had to work, and you sent me away to do it. I looked upon it then as a degradation. I see it differently now. I have worked with all my might all summer, and I have brought back a whole lot of sketches that the boys like. Now I am going to work again with Mr. Slade. I do not like his work, and I do love mine, but I am going to stick to his all the same. I have got something to work for now," and his face brightened.

"I am going to win!"

She did not interrupt him. It was better he should unburden his heart.

She was satisfied with his record; if he went wrong she only was to blame. But he was not going wrong; nor was there anything to worry about--not even his art--not so long as he kept his place with Mr.

Slade and only took it up as a relaxation from more weighty cares. It was only the girl that caused her a moment's thought.

She saw too, through all his outburst, a certain independence and a fearlessness and a certain fixedness of purpose that sent an exultant thrill through her even when her heart was burdened with the thought of this new danger that threatened him. She had sent him away for the fault of instability, and he had overcome it. Should she not now hold fast, as she had before, and save him the second time from this girl who was beneath him in station and who would drag him down to her level, and so perhaps ruin him?

"We will not talk any more about it to-night, my son," she said, in tender tones, leaning forward and kissing him on the cheek--it was through his affections that she controlled him. "You should be tired out with your day's journey and ought to rest. Take my advice--do not ask her to be your wife yet. Think about it a little and see some other women before you make up your mind."

A delicious tremor pa.s.sed through Oliver. He HAD asked her, and she HAD promised! He remembered just the very day, the hour, the minute. That was the bliss of it all! But this he did not tell his mother. He would not hurt her any further now. Some other day he would tell her; when she could see Madge and judge for herself. No, not to-night, and so with the secret untold he kissed her and led her to her room.

And yet strange to say it was the one only thing in all his life that he had kept from her.

Ah! these mothers! who make lovers of their only sons, dominating their lives! How bitter must be the hours when they realize that another's arms are opening for them!

And these boys--what misgivings come; what doubts. How the old walls, impregnable from childhood, begin to crumble! How little now the dear mother knows--she so wise but a few moons since. How this new love steps in front of the old love and claims every part of the boy as its very own.

Faithful to her promise, Miss Clendenning waited the next morning for Oliver in her little boudoir that opened out of the library. A bright fire blazed and crackled, sending its beams dancing over the room and lighting up the red curtains that hung behind her writing-desk, its top covered with opened letters--her morning's mail: many bore foreign postmarks, and not a few were emblazoned with rampant crests sunk in little dabs of colored wax. She wore a morning gown of soft white flannel belted in at the waist. Covering her head and wound loosely about her throat was a fluff of transparent silk, half-concealing the two nests of little gray and brown knots impaled on hair-pins. These were the chrysalides of those gay b.u.t.terfly side-curls which framed her sweet face at night and to which she never gave wing until after luncheon, no matter who called. The silk scarf that covered them this morning was in recognition of Oliver's s.e.x.

She had finished her breakfast and was leaning forward in her rocking-chair, her elbows on her knees, her tiny feet resting on the fender. She was watching the fire-fairies at work building up their wonderful palaces of molten gold studded with opals and rubies. The little lady must have been in deep thought, for she did not know Oliver had entered until she felt his arm on her shoulder.

"Ah, you dear fellow. No, not there; sit right here on this cricket by my side. Stop, do not say a word. I have been studying it all out in these coals. I know all about it--it is about the mountain girl, this--what do you call her?"

"Miss Grant."

"Nonsense! What do YOU call her?"

"Madge."

"Ah, that's something like it. And you love her?"

"Yes." (Pianissimo.)

"And she loves you?"

"YES." (Forte.)

"And you have told her so?"

"YES!" (Fortissimo.)

"Whew!" Miss Clendenning caught her breath and gave a little gasp.

"Well, upon my word! You don't seem to have lost any time, my young Romeo. What does her father say?"

"He doesn't know anything about it."

"Does anybody except you two babes in the wood?"

"Yes, her mother."

"And yours? You told her last night. I knew you would."

"Not everything; but she is all upset."

"Of course she is. So am I. Now tell me--is she a LADY?"

"She is the dearest, sweetest girl you--"

"Come now, come now, answer me. They are all the dearest and sweetest things in the world. What I want to know is, is she a lady?"

"Yes."

"True now, Ollie--honest?"

"Yes, in every sense of the word. A woman you would love and be proud of the moment you saw her."

Miss Clendenning took his face in her hands and looked down into his eyes. "I believe you. Now what do you want me to do?"

"I want her to come down here so everybody can see her. If I had a sister she could invite her, and it would be all right, and maybe then her mother would let her come."

"And you want me to play the sister and have her come here?"

Oliver's fingers closed tight over Miss Clendenning's hand. "Oh, Midget, if you only would, that would fix everything. Mother would understand then why I love her, and Madge could go back and tell her people about us. Her father is very bitter against everybody at the South. They would feel differently if Madge could stay a week with us."

"Why won't her father bring her?"

"He never leaves home. He would not even take her to the mountains, fifteen miles away. She could never paint as she does if she had relied upon him. Mother and Mr. Grant are both alike in their hatred of art as a fitting profession for anybody, and I tell you that they are both wrong."

Miss Clendenning looked up in surprise. She had never seen the boy take a stand of this kind against one of his mother's opinions. Oliver saw the expression on the little lady's face and kept on, his cheeks flushed and a set look about his eyes.

"Yes, wrong. I have never believed mother could be wrong in anything before, and when she wanted me to give up painting I did so because I thought she knew best. But I know she's not right about Madge, and if she is wrong about her, how do I know she was not wrong about my working with Mr. Crocker?"

Margaret's words that day in the bark slant were now ringing in his ears. He had never forgotten them--"Your mother cannot coddle you up forever."

Miss Clendenning held her peace. She was not astonished at the revolt in the boy's mind. She had seen for months past in his letters that Oliver's individuality was a.s.serting itself. It was the new girl whom he was defending--the woman he loved. This had given him strength. She knew something of what he felt, and she knew what blind obedience had done for her. With a half-smothered sigh, she reached over Oliver's head, dipped a quill pen in her inkstand, and at Oliver's dictation, wrote Margaret's address.

"I will invite her at once," she said.

Long after Oliver had gone Miss Clendenning sat looking into the fire.

The palaces of rose and amber that the busy fingers of the fire fairies had built up in the white heat of their enthusiasm were in ruins. The light had gone out. Only gray ashes remained, with here and there a dead cinder.