Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1895 — Silence [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Silence

By Miss Mulock

CHAPTER Xl—Continued. “Not quarreled, only differed,” answered he, laughing. “And I suppose all people do differ, and yet love one another to the end. You love me still?”

“Yes”—with a sudden gravity—“because I respect you. I think there is one only thing which could kill my love—ls I ceased to respect you. I should do my duty still, but all love would go dead out, like a fire when ene tramples on it. And then I think no power on earth could ever light it up again.” “God forbid!” Roderick said, startled by a kind of sad sternness which came into the gentle face. But it did him good, after all, to feel that there was that in his wife which would never suffer any man to make her either into a plaything or a slave. The next minute she had slipped her hand into his. “Don’t let us talk such nonsense, my Roderick; you will always love me and hold me fast I can bear anything so long as you hold me fast” He did hold fast, and through more trials than she guesed. To his sensitive nature, the continual dread of meeting Rleherden people—old acquaintances who might speak to him or her of painful things—became a perfect bugbear. And though Mrs. Grierson, with her usual delicate tact bad managed to let him understand that his o’Sjrn family had all returned to town—that is, Rleherden—for the winter, still he caught himself looking into every carriage that passed along the one beautiful seaside road, every steamer that stopped at the now half-deserted quay, with a nervous anxiety lest he should see some familiar face; familiar still, but welcome no more. Suppose he did meet them—he only said “them” without individualizing—what should he do? Would nature and Instinct triumph over reason, so that he could not ignore them, his own flesh and blood, look and pass by, as if they were common strangers? And once, Silence, who after a time began to divine his unspoken thoughts, brought him face to face with them by a sudden question, put with a tender anxiety, but very earnestly. “Roderick, I have often wanted to ask—what should you do if you were to meet your mother?" “If we were to meet her, you mean; for we are never apart.” In truth he took care they never should be apart, lest somebody or something should chance to wound her, the defenseless creature whom every day he felt more bound to cherish, and concerning whom his indignation continually higher rose. A “tragedy in a teapot” may be, but none the less a tragedy that was always coming between them and the sun; and worse here, after a little, when the first pleasantness of the change had worn off—worse certainly than at Blackball. By and by, he spoke of going back to Blackhall, but good Mrs. Grierson entreated they would stay on a little longer. “It would do your wife good, and me too,” she said. “Remember I have no daughter, and she no mother.” “That is true, poor child!” And he looked sadly across to where, in sweet unconscious peace, Silence sat, making with her deft fingers a cap for the old lady.

“Why call her 'poor?' Pardon me, my dear Roderick, but may I ask one question—has your mother ever seen your wife?” “No.” “She ought to see her. Do you not think so?” “What do you mean, Mrs. Grierson? But, excuse me, this is a subject upon which we had better not speak.” “I agree with you, and should never have spoken,” said the old lady nervously, “were it not almost my duty to tell you that Mrs. Jardine is at Fairfield, close by, come unexpectedly on a three days’ visit She may not come to see me, and she may. If she does ” “We will leave immediately,” said Roderick, rising. “Indeed, my dear Mrs. Grierson, it is much better so. We should grieve to cause you a moment’s inconvenience.” “My dear,” laying her hand on his arm, and looking at him with sweet calm eyes that were so near the other world as to have half forgotten the sorrows of this, “ my dear, I knew you as soon as you were born. Forgive an old woman who never had a child; but mothers are mothers—don’t you think that instead of going away, you should rather stay, on the chance of seeing your mother?” “See my mother? what, she— But, indeed, I cannot talk over these things, which, I suppose, you know all about Everybody does know everybody else’s affairs in Rlcherden.” “Yes, I know.” “Then it is kind not to have spoken to me before. Let us continue that wholesome silence. Let me take my wife and go.” “Suppose your wife and I were to settle that question. She is the dearest little woman in the world. I only wish I had her for my daughter. Wornen'understand women best,” she added with a gentle smile. “I think, my dear boy, you had better walk away.” Roderick did not walk away, but he suffered Mrs. Grierson to go over and speak to his wife. Finally, the ice once broken, they were able to talk over these painful things all three together. The younger ones poured out their grief and wrath; at least Roderick did; Silence said nothing. The older woman listened patiently and tenderly, yet took a little the opposite side, for there are two sides to every subject, and those are the wisest people who in youth can see . with old—in ago with young eyes. Deep as her sympathy was, seventy views things a little different from twenty-seven. The warm, motherly heart could not choose but put Itself In i' i . 1

the mother's place—the mother who had so wholly lost, or persuaded herself she had lost, her beloved and only son. “I have known Mrs. Jardine ever since her marriage," Mrs. Grierson explained to Silence. “She is a woman of Strong prejudices, strong passions, but generous and kindly; doing wrong tilings sometimes, as we all do, but doing them with the best intentions, which not all of us do. But I beg your husband's pardon for criticizing his mother, who is so totally opposite to his wife that, on the principle that extremes meet, I should not wonder if, when you do meet, you were to like one another amazingly.” Roderick made no answer; but whether he believed it or not, the idea certainly seemed to comfort him. He listened with patience that surprised himself to a further homily and many gentle arguments; ending with one which youth is slow to understand, that life is too short for anything but love and peace. Yielding, at last, to her earnest entreaty, and to the mute appeal of bis wife’s eyes, Roderick consented that Mrs. Grierson should write a brief note to his mother, mentioning formally what guests she had in her bouse, and how happy she would be to see Mrs. Jardine, “were it convenient and agreeable.” The next six hours, spent within doors—they shrunk from the chanoes of the road without—were not very happy hours to any of the trio. It was nearly night—a red, stormy sunset fading over the sea, the “white horses” rising, a gale beginning to blow and dash the waves wildly against the rocks under the drawingroom windows. Roderick and Silence had been watching the twilight shadows upon the mountains, beyond which lay Blackhall and home. “I almost wish we were at home,” she whispered; and he had put his arms tenderly round her, when suddenly Mrs. Grierson entered with a letter in her hand. “Read that, my dears. It is, I own, rather surprising." It was—from a mother. “Mrs. Jardine’s compliments to Mrs. Grierson, and she does not intend going out today; but if Mr. Roderick Jardine has anything to say to her he may come, provided he comes alone, at ten o’clock to-morrow.”

These brief lines were passed round, and then the three regarded one another, doubtful who should speak first, and still more doubtful what to say. At last Roderick, pressing his hostess' hand, bade her not to be troubled, She had done her best. “But you see, dear Mrs. Grierson, that I was right. We had better go home.” “And not go and see your mother?” “Certainly not without my wife. Dear,” turning to her affectionately, “we did not have it in our Swiss marriage service, though, I believe, it is in the English one; but there is a text—‘What God bath joined together let no man put asunder.’ I do not mean to be put asunder from my wife—not even by my mother.” . He spoke smilingly, caressing her the while, but Silence burst into tears. “And it is I that have been the cause of this —I, who Does she know, Roderick, that my mother is dead? And would any one whose mother is dead wish to keep a son away from his living mother? Go to her with or without me—only go!” Roderick thought differently. To him it appeared the most arrant cowardice; desertion of the wife he had deliberately chosen; acknowledgment of an error he had never committed. Besides, it was a weak truckling to the stronger side—the wealthier side. “For (you may not know it, Mrs. Grierson, though it seems to me that everybody does get to know everything, especially at Rleherden) my mother's money is all in her own hands; and I —we—are as poor as church mice.” Mrs. Grierson smiled. “Money is a good thing and a bad thing, but not half such an important thing as some folks imagine. It need not hinder a man from going to see his own mother.”

Roderick winced slightly. “Then you think my pride wrong?” “Not pride for her,” with a tender glance at Silence. “But as for yourself —a man satisfied of his own real motives should be indifferent to any imputed ones. That is not his concern at all.” “You are right—l admit it. Still, as to my wife ” But Silence flung herself, in one or her rare outbursts of emotion, on her knees beside her husband. “Go, I beseech you, go! She Is alive—you can hear her speak—you can make her understand you love her. Oh, Roderick, you don’t know what it is to call when there is none to answer—to weep when there is none to comfort you. Go, go! You have no idea what it is to feel that one’s mother is dead!” He kissed and comforted her into calmness; but something struck and startled him, something which, under all her sweet cheerfulness, he had never found out before—that mystery of being “acquainted with grief.” He himself had known vexation, annoyance, disappointment—but sorrow, heart sorrow he had never known. She had. Young as she was, he felt from that hour that in many things his wife was both older and wiser than he. “I will do exactly as you wish,” he said. “Mrs. Grierson, will you write to my mother, and say I shall be with her at the appointed hour? But, remember it is wholly and solely because my wife desires it” So he went When he came back, which was almost Immediately, he sat down beside Silence, and kissed her without a word. “Well, my love, 1 have done as youwished, and—there Is an end of it.” “What did she say?" “We bad neither of us an opoortuuity of saying anything. She had, br discovered, Important business at Kicberden, and left at 8 this morning ” “Without any letter or message?” “Without one single word. And now, my wife, that page is turned over. Let us close the book and begin again. Is it not best, Mrs. Grierson?” The old lady hesitated. There were tears in her kindly eyes. "It shall be best,” said Roderick, firmly. “Cones, my darling, set us

thank our dear friend here for all bet goodness to us. Let us pack up our boxes and return to Blackhall.” To Roderick, as perhaps to most men, anything was easier than a thing uncertain. He recovered in spirits sooner than Silence, who was greatly distressed, could at all have expected. Perhaps, like many of us, having resolved to do a painful thing, he was not sorry when fate stepped in to prevent bis doing it And he listened patiently to Mrs. Grierson's arguments against rashly judging what might have been pure accident or unavoidable necessity. “We shall see,” he said. “In the meantime, need we say any more. My wife and I have an equal dislike to talking it over. Let us all forget it, and spend a happy last day together.” It was happy, and the next day, too. Mrs. Grierson, who, while consenting to their departure, had sorely regretted it, had accompanied him a part of the way on their journey, and made it as easy as she could. Her farewell words, too, were given with unmistakable, earnest affection. “Roderick, take care of your wife.” He did take care of her, with an instinct nefc, but strangely sweet. Most men have passion in them; many have a kindly good-nature, and a sort of ever-craving affectionateness which passes for love; but very few have that tenderness —that generous devotion of the strong to the weak, the helpful to the helpless, which constitutes the highest manliness, and which is best described by the scripture phrase, “I was an husband unto them.” Roderick had it Lovely as the day was—one of those rare late autumn days which in Scotland make earth look like paradise—and beautiful as was the scenery through which they passed. Silence was so tired with her journey that for the last few miles she lay with her head on Roderick's shoulder, scarcely speaking a word, and only rousing herself when she saw, glimmering like stars in the distance, the window of Blackball. “Ah!” she sighed, “that must be home.” “ ‘East or west, home *is best.’ ‘Home is home, be it ever so homely,’ ” said Roderick, as he lifted her in-doors, and sat her in the large arm-chair by the blazing fire, seeing nothing, heeding ’nothing, except the little pale face which to him was so infinitely dear. Not until tea was over and her cheerful smile had fully returned, did he notice, among the small heap of papers lying waiting for him, the fatal well-known book-packet—the MS. returned. He tried to cover it over, and not let his wife see it, but her eye was too quick. Vain, too, was the innocent deception of his protest that he “fully expected this,” and “did not care.” “But I care,” said Silence, mournfully. And then the poor young things sat down face to face with their bitter disappointment, and tried to bear it as well as they could. (To be continued.)