Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/668

616 laugh at me. He never took back tracks in his life. He never reconsidered what was done. He only pressed on to the goal that was before him."

"Yes," said the mother, quietly, "I know."

"But don't you see, mother," the girl cried, with an added passion, "what the goal proved to be? An unlamented death, an obscure grave."

"Not lamented?"

At that moment John, having finished his work, came out upon the back veranda, and Mary followed him. They took the two chairs there, and sat in quiet talk together. The two women in the garden knew their minds were busy over this home-coming and the absent master of the house.

"Yet," said Constance, after they had exchanged a glance over that pregnant byplay, "I want to build a monument to him. You wrote me you had put up a stone to him in the churchyard here. I want this to be my stone."

"Yes, I put up the stone; but Blaise doesn't lie there. No matter where the real man lies. And as for the goal—" she looked inevitably up at the sky where a star was shining. "Well—" she said, and could not finish.

"You want I should bring you somethin' thicker to put on?" called Mary from the porch.

Madam Burton smiled. " No," said she,—adding to Constance: "That is Mary's way of ordering me in. I do get stiff. It's a silly piece of business, this growing old."

"Let us go in," said Constance, with quick solicitude.

"We might as well. I want to take you up to my room. There are one or two things there you'd like to see. I'll go up first, my dear, and get a light." But while Constance lingered in the hall, Mary King came through the dining-room and beckoned. Constance followed her back to the kitchen, and there Mary took from her pocket a little worn card, and held it solicitously out between her thumb and finger.

"I didn't want her to see it," she whispered. "She never knew there was such a thing. It's just as well not."

Constance took the card and bent over it by the light of the candle. When she looked up, Mary King nodded triumphantly and smiled.

"It's a reward of merit," said she. "The first he ever got."

Constance looked again at the glazed surface, where, under a moss rosebud, was her husband's name, with the date of a long-past year.

"He wa'n't no bigger'n a pint o' cider," continued Mary King, in swelling chronicle, "when he come home that afternoon with this held out in his hand, as budge as you please. 'Here, Mary,' says he, 'here's my reward of merit. You can have it if you want to. Where's the cookies? Mary chuckled. Where's the cookies? she repeated, as if the words were golden grain. "If I hadn't kep' over the rollin'-pin pretty stiddy, he'd ha' eat us out o' house an' home."

"So he gave it to you!" said Constance. Her eyes were wet and her mouth trembled.

"Yes. His mother was in York State makin' a visit, an' when she come back he never thought on't again. But I kep' it nice, in among my things."

"Coming, Constance?" called Madam Burton.

"Thank you, Mary," said the girl, giving back the card. "I'm glad you showed it to me."

Mary nodded, and holding it in one careful hand, took her way toward the kitchen, while Constance ran up-stairs.

Madam Burton was in the west chamber, where there was provision for all weathers: a great fireplace for the cold, with chintz-covered furniture and floating curtains to fit the summer. There were a few old-fashioned pictures, a Landseer, a Reynolds, and peacock feathers drooped over the glass. The room offered an impression of unconsidered furnishing, as if things not wanted in the rest of the house had drifted there for refuge. Yet it had an air of comfort. It was a mother's room. There were two lighted candles on the dressing-table, and Madam Burton, standing before them in her graceful slenderness, the shawl dropping from her shoulders, turned with an inviting gesture. Constance joined her there, and the other woman laughed in a sweet deprecation.

"It's so silly, dear," she said, "but I came across it to-day. It's a valentine