第23章 THE INHERITANCE(23)

His beautiful, stately mother, who, in spite of her gray hair, had always seemed but little older than himself, vanished as mysteriously from his sight--on a thrilling morning when there were many waving red flags and much hurried marching by of gray-clad troops.Young as he was, he was already beginning to play his boy's share in a war which was then fighting slowly to a finish; and in the wild flutter of events he forgot, for a time, to do more than tip softly when he crossed the hall.She was ill, they told him--too ill to care even about the battles that were fought across the river.The sound of the big guns sent no delicious shivers through her limbs, and there was only Lila to come with him when he laid his ear to the ground and thrilled with the strong shock which seemed to run around the earth.When at last her door was opened again and he went timidly in, holding hands with Lila, he found his mother sitting stiffly erect among her cushions as she would sit for the remainder of her days, blind and half dead, in her Elizabethan chair.His beautiful, proud mother, with the smiling Loves painted above her head!

For an instant he shut his eyes beneath the cedars, seeing her on that morning as a man sees in his dreams the face of his first love.Then another day dawned slowly to his consciousness--a day which stood out clear-cut as a cameo from all the others of his life.For weeks Cynthia's eyes had been red and swollen, and he commented querulously upon them, for they made her homelier than usual.When he had finished, she looked at him a moment without replying, then, putting her arm about him, she drew him out upon the lawn and told him why she wept.It was a mellow autumn day, and they passed over gold and russet leaves strewn deep along the path.A light wind was blowing in the tree-tops, and the leaves were still falling, falling, falling! He saw Cynthia's haggard face in a flame of glowing colours.Through the drumming in his ears, which seemed to come from the clear sky, he heard the ceaseless rustle beneath his feet; and to this day he could not walk along a leaf-strewn road in autumn without seeing again the blur of red-and-gold and the gray misery in Cynthia's face.

"It will kill mother!" he said angrily."It will kill mother!

Why, she almost died when Docia broke her Bohemian bowl.""She must never know," answered Cynthia, while the tears streamed unheeded down her cheeks."When she is carried out one day for her airing, she shall go back into the other house.It is a short time now at best--she may die at any moment from any shock--but she must die without knowing this.There must be quiet at the end, at least.Oh, poor mother! poor mother!"She raised her hands to her convulsed face, and Christopher saw the tears trickle through her thin fingers, "She must never know," repeated the boy."She must never know if we can help it.""We must help it," cried Cynthia passionately."We must work our fingers to the bone to help it, you and I.""And Lila?" asked the boy, curiously just even in the intensity of his emotion."Mustn't Lila work, too?"Cynthia sobbed--hard, strangling sobs that rattled like stones within her bosom.

"Lila is only a girl," she said, "and so pretty, so pretty."The boy nodded.

"Then don't let's make Lila work," he responded sturdily.

Selfish in her supreme unselfishness, the woman turned and kissed his brow, while he struggled, irritated, to keep her off.

"Don't let's, dear," she said, and that was all.

IX.Cynthia As soon as Christopher had passed out of sight, Cynthia came from the kitchen with an armful of wet linen and began spreading it upon some scrubby lilac bushes in a corner of the yard.After fifteen years it still made her uncomfortable to have Christopher around when she did the family washing, and when it was possible she waited to dry the clothes until he had gone back to the field.In her scant calico dress, with the furrows of age already settling about her mouth, and her pale brown hair strained in thin peaks back from her forehead, she might have stood as the world-type of toil-worn womanhood, for she was of the stuff of martyrs, and the dignity of their high resolve was her one outward grace.Life had been revealed to her as something to be endured rather than enjoyed, and the softer adornments of her sex had not withstood the daily splashes of harsh soapsuds--they had faded like colours too delicate to stand the strain of ordinary use.

As she lifted one of her mother's full white petticoats and turned to wring it dry with her red and blistered hands, a look that was perilously near disgust was on her face--for though she had done her duty heroically and meant to do it until the end, there were brief moments when it sickened her to desperation.She was the kind of woman whose hands perform the more thoroughly because the heart revolts against the task.

Lila, in her faded muslin which had taken the colours of November leaves, came to the kitchen doorway and stood watching her with a cheerful face.

"Has Jim Weatherby gone, Cynthia?"

Cynthia nodded grimly, turning her squinting gaze upon her."Do you think I'd let him see me hanging out the clothes?" she snapped.Supreme as her unselfishness was, there were times when she appeared to begrudge the least of her services; and after the manner of all affection that comes as a bounty, the unwilling spirit was more impressive than the ready hand.

"I do wish you would make Docia help you," said Lila, in a voice that sounded as if she were speaking in her own defense.

Cynthia wrung out a blue jean shirt of Christopher's, spread it on an old lilac-bush, and pushed a stray lock of hair back with her wrist.