Chapter VIII: Mildred and Her Mother

It was several days before Mildred went to the farm house, from which her husband would have kept her altogether if he could have done so. His determination to separate her as much as possible from her family had been constantly increasing since his return, and he had fully made up his mind to leave Rocky Point by the first of September and advertise the Park for sale, thus cutting off all chance for intimacy in the future when it was known who she was. She could do for her family all she pleased, he thought, but she must not be intimate with them, and on his way to the house, for he drove her there himself, he reminded her again of her promise, saying to her very kindly, as he helped her to alight:

“I can trust you, Milly, and am sorry for you, for I know it will be hard to meet your mother and keep silence.”

It was harder than Mildred herself had anticipated, for the sight of the familiar place, the walk, the garden, and the brook, where she had waded barefoot many a time in summer and drawn her sled in winter with Hugh at her side, nearly unmanned her, and every nerve was quivering as she rang the bell in the door of the little, square entry, with the steep, narrow stairs winding up to the chambers above. It was Bessie who answered the ring, blushing when she saw her visitor and apologizing for her appearance. The hired girl was gone for a day or two, leaving her maid of all work, and as this was baking day she was deep in the mysteries of pastry and bread, with her long, bib apron on and her hands covered with flour.

“Never mind me,” Mildred said, as she took in the situation. “It was thoughtless in me to come in the morning. Please keep to your work while I talk with your mother. I will call upon you some other time. Oh, Gerard, you here?” she continued, as through the door opening into the kitchen she saw the young man seated by the table pitting cherries which Bessie was to make into pies. “That’s right; help all you can,” she added with a smile, glad he was there, as it would leave her alone and freer with her mother, whom she found in the bright, sunny room, built partly with the money she had sent.

Mrs. Leach was always very neat and clean, but this morning she was particularly so, in her black cambric dress and spotless white apron, with the widow’s cap resting on her snowy hair. Her hands were folded together, and she was leaning back in her chair as if asleep, when Mildred’s voice roused her, and a moment after Bessie said:

“Here, mother, is Mrs. Thornton, and as I am so busy I will leave her with you for a little while.”

Suddenly, as if she had been shot, Mrs. Leach started forward, and rubbing her eyes, in which there was an eager, expectant look, said:

“I must have been dozing, for I dreamed that Milly had come and I heard her voice in the kitchen. Mis’ Thornton here, did you say? I am very proud to meet her;” and the hands were outstretched, groping in the helpless way habitual with the blind. And Mildred took the hands in hers and drawing a chair to her mother’s side sat down so close to her that Mrs. Leach felt her hot breath stir her hair and knew she was being looked at very closely. But how closely she did not dream, for Mildred’s soul was in her eyes, which scanned the worn face where suffering and sorrow had left their impress. And what a sad, sweet face it was, so sweet and sad that Mildred involuntarily took it between her hands and kissed it passionately; then, unable to control herself, she laid her head on her mother’s bosom and sobbed like a little child.

“What is it? Oh, Mrs. Thornton, you scare me. What makes you cry so? Who are you?” Mrs. Leach said, excitedly, for she was frightened by the strange conduct of her visitor.

“You must excuse me,” Mildred said, lifting up her head. “The sight of you unnerved me, for my,—my mother is blind?”

She did not at all mean to say what she knew would involve more deception of a certain kind, but she had said it and could not take it back, and it was a sufficient explanation of her emotion to Mrs. Leach, who said:

“Your mother blind! Dear,—dear,—how did it happen, and has she been so long? Where does she live, and how could she bear to have you leave her? Dear, dear!”

“Don’t talk of her now, please. I can’t bear it,” Mildred replied, and thinking to herself, “Homesick, poor thing,” Mrs. Leach, whose ideas of the world were narrowed to her own immediate surroundings, began to talk of herself and her family in a desultory kind of way, while Mildred listened with a feeling of half wonder, half pain.

All her associations while with Mrs. Harwood had been with highly-cultivated people, and in one sense her mother was new to her and she realized as she had never done before how different she was from Mr. Thornton and herself. “But she is my mother, and nothing can change my love for her,” she thought, as she studied her and the room, which was cozy and bright, though very plainly furnished as compared with the elegant boudoir where she had made her own toilet. There was the tall clock in the corner which had ticked away the hours and days she once thought so dreary and lonely; the desk between the windows, where her father used to keep his papers, and his old, worn pocketbook, in which there was never much money, and on the bed in another corner was a patchwork quilt, a few blocks of which Mildred had pieced herself, recognizing them now with a start and a throb of pain as she saw in two of them bits of the frock she had bought for Charlie with the berries picked in her husband’s pasture. She had been turned out then as a trespasser where she was mistress now, and there were diamonds on her white hands, which had once washed potatoes for dinner, her special abomination, and her gown had cost more than all her mother’s wardrobe. And there she sat in a kind of dream, while the other Mildred of years ago sat close beside her, confusing and bewildering her, so that she hardly heard half her mother was saying about Tom and Bessie, the dearest children in the world. But when at last her own name was mentioned she started and was herself again, and listened as her mother went on:

“I’ve another girl, Mildred by name, but I call her Milly. She’s been in Europe for years, and has been everywhere and speaks French and German, and writes such beautiful letters.”

She was evidently very proud of her absent daughter, and the lady beside her, whose pallid face she could not see, clasped her hands and held her breath as she continued:

“I never s’posed she’d stay so long when she went away, or I couldn’t let her go; but somehow or other she’s staid on and on till she’s been gone many a year; many a year has Milly been gone, fifteen years come fall, and now ‘tain’t likely I should know her, if I could see. You won’t be offended, Mis’ Thornton, if I say that something about you makes me think of Milly; something in your voice at first, and you laid your head on my neck and cried just as she used to when things went wrong and fretted her, which they mostly did, for she wasn’t meant to be poor, and was always wantin’ to be rich and grand. I guess she is grand now she’s been in foreign places so much, but she’s comin’ home in the fall; she wrote me so in her last letter. You’ll call on her, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Mildred stammered, scarcely able to keep herself from crying out: “Oh, mother, I _have_ come. I am Milly,” but a thought of her husband restrained her, and thinking how she would make amends in the future, when freed from her promise of secrecy, she listened again, while her mother talked of her father and Charlie, and lastly of Hugh McGregor, who was a great favorite with the old lady.

“Jest like my own boy,” Mrs. Leach said, “and so kind to Tom. He lent him money to go to school, and helps him a sight in his law books, and helps on the farm, too, when he gets time, which is not often, for Hugh is a first-rate lawyer and pleads at the bar like a judge. I believe he’s comin’. Yes, I hear his step,” and her face lighted up as Hugh appeared in the open door.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Leach,” he called cheerily. “I beg your pardon, good morning, Mrs. Thornton,” and he bowed deferentially to the lady as he came in with a cluster of lovely roses, which he laid in Mrs. Leach’s lap, saying, “Here are some of Milly’s roses. They opened this morning and I brought them to you. Shall I give one to Mrs. Thornton?”

“Yes, do; the fairest and best. I think she must be like them, though I can’t see her,” Mrs. Leach replied, and selecting one of the finest, Hugh offered it to Mildred, whose cheeks rivaled it in color, as she held it near them to inhale its perfume.

It was of the variety known as “Souvenir d’un Ami,” and the original stock had been bought by Mrs. Leach two or three years before with some money sent her by Mildred, whose name she had given to the rose. This she explained to Mildred, adding that Mr. McGregor was so fond of the rose that he had taken a slip from her garden and planted it under his office window.

“He calls it Milly’s rose,” she added, “for he and Milly were great friends, as children. Hugh, ain’t there something about Mis’ Thornton that makes you think of Milly?”

Mildred’s face was scarlet, but she tried to hide it by bending her head very low as she fastened the rose to the bosom of her dress, while Hugh answered laughingly, “Why, no. Milly was small and thin, and a child when we saw her, while Mrs. Thornton is——” here he stopped, confused and uncertain as to what he ought to say next. But when Mildred’s eyes flashed upon him expectantly, he added very gallantly, “Mrs. Thornton is more like Milly’s roses.”

“Thank you for the compliment, Mr. McGregor. I will remember it and keep Milly’s rose, too,” Mildred said, with a little dash of coquetry, and a ring in her voice which made Hugh think of the Milly who, he supposed, was thousands of miles away.

Just then there was the sound of wheels stopping before the house, and Gerard, with his apron still tied around his neck, for he was not yet through with his culinary duties, came to the door, saying, “Mrs. Thornton, father is waiting for you.”

“Yes, I’ll be there directly,” Mildred replied, rising hurriedly to say good-bye, and giving her hand to her mother, who fondled it a moment and then said to her, “Your hands are soft as a baby’s, and there are many rings on your fingers. I think I know how they look, and I have felt your hair, but not your face. Tom and Bessie say it is handsome. Would you mind my feeling it? That’s my way of seeing.”

Mildred was glad that Hugh had stepped in to the next room and could not see her agitation, as she knelt beside the blind woman, whose hands moved slowly over her face and then up to her hair, where they rested a moment as if in benediction, while she said, “You are lovely, I am sure, and good, too, and your poor blind mother must miss you so much. Didn’t she hate to part with you?”

“Yes, oh, yes, and my heart is aching for her. Please bless me as if you were my mother and I your daughter Milly,” was Mildred’s sobbing reply, her tears falling like rain as the shaking hands pressed heavily upon her bowed head, while the plaintive voice said slowly, “God bless you, child, and make you happy with your husband, and comfort your poor mother while you are away from her. Amen.”

“Will you tell Mrs. Thornton I am in a hurry?” Mr. Thornton said to Bessie, loudly enough for Mildred to hear, and wiping her tears away, she went out through the side door where her husband was standing, with a frown upon his face, caused not so much by her delay as by the glimpse he was sure he had caught of his son, in the kitchen, with a checked apron tied round his neck and a big cherry stain on his forehead.

Nor did the sight of his wife’s flushed cheeks and red eyes help to restore his equanimity, and although he said nothing then, Mildred felt that he was displeased, as he helped her into the phaeton and took his seat beside her.