the men do not." The rector spoke gravely. He was but little over thirty himself, yet he had been obliged more than once to put a mildly restraining pressure upon the somewhat too active gay-mindedness of his venerable junior warden.
"What's that thing they're trying now?" said this official, abandoning his jocularity. "Dull and see-saw it sounds to me; dull and see-saw."
"It's a Te Deum I selected for Trinity Sunday."
"Ah, if you selected it – But it can never equal 'old Jackson's,' never! That's Sophy Greer on the solo. She can no more do it than a consumptive hen. But, sir, I'll tell you who can – Sara Carroll. They expect her home to-night."
"Madam Carroll's daughter?"
"No, the Major's. Madam Carroll is the Major's second wife – didn't you know that? Sara Carroll, sir, can never hope to equal her step-mother in beauty, grace, or charm. But she is a fine girl in her way – as indeed she ought to be: her mother was a Witherspoon-Meredith."
The rector looked unimpressed. The junior warden, seeing this, drew up his chair. "The Witherspoon-Merediths, Mr. Owen, are one of our oldest families." (The rector resigned himself.) "When Scarborough Carroll married the beautiful Sara of that name, a noble pair they were, indeed, as they stood at the altar. I speak, sir, from knowledge: I was there. Their children – two boys – died, to their great grief. The last child was this daughter Sara; and the accomplished mother passed away soon after the little thing's birth. Sir, Major Carroll, your senior warden, has always been one of our grandest men; in personal appearance, character, and distinguished services, one of the noblest sons of our state. Of late he has not, perhaps, been quite what he was physically; but the change is, in my opinion, entirely due – entirely – to his own absurd imprudences. For he is still in the prime of life, the very prime." (Major Carroll was sixty-nine; but as the junior warden was eighty-five, he naturally considered his colleague still quite a boy.) "Until lately, however, he has been undeniably, I will not say one of nature's princes, because I do not believe in them, but one of the princes of the Carrolls, which is saying a vast deal more. His little girl has always adored him. He has been, in fact, a man to inspire admiration. To give you an idea of what I mean: a half-brother of his, much older than himself, and broken in health, lost, by the failure of a bank, all he had in the world. He was a married man, with a family. Carroll, who was at that time a young lieutenant just out of West Point, immediately shared his own property with this unfortunate relative. He didn't dole out help, keeping a close watch over its use, or grudgingly give so much a year, with the constant accompaniment of good advice; he simply deeded a full half of all he had to his brother, and never spoke of it again. Forty-five years have passed, and he has never broken this silence; the brother is dead, and I doubt if the children and grandchildren who profited by the generous act even know to whom they are indebted. Such, sir, is the man, chivalrous, unsullied, true. In 1861 he gave his sword to his state, and served with great gallantry throughout the war. He was twice severely wounded; you may have noticed that his left arm is stiff. When our Sacred Cause was lost, with the small remains of his small fortune he purchased this old place called the Farms, and here, sir, he has come, to pass the remainder of his days in, as I may well say, the Past – the only country left open to him, as indeed to many of us." And the old gentleman's cough ended in the groan.
"And Miss Carroll has not been with them here?" asked the rector, giving the helm of conversation a slight turn from this well-beaten track.
"No, she has not. But there have been good reasons for it. To give you the causes, I must make a slight detower into retrospect. At a military post in Alabama, when Sara was about seven years old, the Major met the lady who is now Madam Carroll; she was then a widow named Morris, with one child, a little girl. You have seen this lady for yourself, sir, and know what she is – a domestic angel, yet a very Muse in culture; one of the loveliest women, one of the most engaging, upon my word, that ever walked the face of this earth, and honored it with her tread." (The junior warden spoke with enthusiasm.) "She is of course very much younger than her husband, thir-ty three or four years at the least, I should say; for Carroll was fifty-six at the time of his second marriage, though no one would have suspected it. I saw Madam Carroll very soon afterwards, and she could not have been then more than twenty one or two; a little fairy-like girl-mother. She must have been married the first time when not more than sixteen. Later they had a son, the boy you know, who is now, save Sara, the only child."
"Ah, I see; I understand," said the rector.
But the junior warden did not; his understanding was that there was more to tell. He drew up his chair again. "Sara Carroll, sir, is a remarkable girl." (The rector again resigned himself.) "She is, as I may say, one-ideaed. By that I mean that she has had from childhood one feeling so predominant that she has fairly seemed to have but the one, which is her devotion to her father. She had scarcely been separated from him (save, as it happens, during the very summer when he met and married the present Madam Carroll) until she was a tall girl of thirteen. This was in 1861. At that time, before the beginning of actual hostilities, her uncle, John Chase – he had married her mother's sister – offered to take her and have her educated with his own daughter Euphemia during the continuance of the troubled times. For John Chase had always been very fond of the little Sara; he fancied that she was like his wife. And, cold New-Englander though he was, he had worshipped his wife (she was Juliet Witherspoon-Meredith), and seemed to be always thinking of her, though she had been dead many years. The Major at first refused. But Madam Carroll, with her exquisite perception, perfect judgment, and beautiful goodness" (the junior warden always spoke in at least triplets of admiration when he mentioned the Major's wife), "explained to him the benefit it would be to Sara. Her own lot was cast with his; she would not have it otherwise; but in the wandering life she expected to lead, following his fortunes through the armed South, what advantages in the way of education should she be able to secure for his little daughter, who was now of an age to need them? Whereas her uncle, who was very fond of her, would give her many. The Major at last yielded. And then Sara was told. Well as they knew her, I think they were both alarmed at the intensity of her grief. But when the poor child saw how it was distressing her father, she controlled it, or rather the expression of it; and to me her self-control was more touching even than her tears had been, for one could see that her innocent heart was breaking. The parting was a most pathetic sight – her white cheeks, silence, and loving, despairing eyes, that never left her father's face – I don't know when I have been more affected. For I speak from personal remembrance, sir: I was there. Well, that little girl did not see her father again for four long years. She lived during that time with her uncle at Longfields – one of those villages of New England with still, elm-shaded, conscientious streets, silent white houses, the green blinds all closed across their broad fronts, yet the whole pervaded too, in spite of this quietude, by an atmosphere of general, unresting interrogativeness, which is, as I may say, sir, strangling to the unaccustomed throat. I speak from personal remembrance; I have been personally there."
"I do not think there is now as much of – of the atmosphere you mention, as there once was," said the rector, smiling.
"Perhaps not, perhaps not. But when I was there you breathed it in every time you opened your mouth – like powdered alum. But to ree-vee-nir (I presume you are familiar with the French expression). In those four years Sara Carroll grew to womanhood; but she did not grow in her feelings; she remained one-ideaed. Mind you, I do not, while describing it, mean in the least to commend such an affection as hers; it was unreasonable, overstrained. I should be very sorry indeed, extremely sorry, to see my daughter Honoria making such an idol of me."
The rector, who knew Miss Honoria Ashley, her aspect, voice, and the rules with which she barred off the days of the poor old junior warden, let his eyes fall upon his well-scrubbed floor (scrubbed twice a week, under the personal supervision of Mrs. Rendlesham, by the Rendleshams maid-of-all-work, Lucilla).
"But the Ashleys are always of a calm and reasonable temperament, I am glad to say," pursued the warden, "a temperament that might be classified
