 | The Story of Ralph Miller |  |
3. III
IT was a long, still summer in Millerstown. Mary Wilson worked in her garden, her shoulders beginning to be stooped, as her mother's had been. Mrs. Miller walked about the park-like setting to her large house — the "mansion," as it was called by the inhabitants of Millerstown, who admired and envied
Mrs. Miller lived on the letters of Cousin Richard, the grim, devoted man to whom they had confided the utterly crushed boy who had returned to them from Mary Wilson's cottage. The old cousin wrote, on the whole, encouragingly. Ralph was looking better, had more color, seemed to be going about and sightseeing. He had been examined lately by a doctor, who said he was as sound as a bell. He — Dick — thought that Ralph seemed listless and preoccupied, but perhaps that was natural under the circumstances. At any rate, he was well, and grew handsomer every day. All the women in the street turned and looked after him.
"He is well — he is well!" Mrs. Miller said it over and over to herself, extracting every drop of comfort possible out of it. Her heart yearned over her son's sorrow, but she was jubilant in her rescue of him. So long as the sensitive lad, as delicate as a girl, did not fall ill with his foolish worry, she could hope for nothing better. The medicine was working as she had hoped. The change, the new experiences, the acquaintance with other people of wholly different views — all would make a new creature of him and bring him back to her to laugh at his idle romance.
The last news received before they started home in the fall was quite as reassuring as the rest had been. Dick was obliged to stay in London over one sailing, but Ralph was to come on alone and visit New York while he waited for his cousin before they began the journey west to Millerstown. Ralph was well, and seemed more like himself than for some time.
The eight days of the silence of the ocean voyage passed quietly in Millerstown, and then came a thunderclap, a telegram from Ralph, in New York, the day he landed:
I was married this morning to Dottie Coster, of London. We will go to Millers-town in two weeks. She was a member of the chorus of the Alhambra in London. She is eighteen years old.
The savage brutality of the announcement and the keen thrust of the last sentence made Mrs. Miller's heart stand still. In an anguish beyond words she showed the telegram to her husband. When cousin Richard arrived alone, a week later, he found a broken and aged woman waiting to hear what he had to say. Trusting in her old self-confident strength and hard courage to bear the truth, he did not spare her. He told the story in his dry, concise way, his weather-beaten old face twisted with a sorrow which made it almost grotesque.
"Yes, I saw them. Yes, she is an actress, a chorus-girl, rather — not even an actress — a common cockney chorus-girl, with a foolish, pretty face, if she wouldn't spoil it with paint. She's respectable enough, I fancy; too young to be anything else. Ralph met her on the steamer. The first night out they sighted an iceberg, and all the passengers were called up to see it. The girl got things twisted somehow — thought there was a wreck and that they were all going to the bottom, and when she found there was no danger burst out crying and saying she'd hoped she was going to die; there was nothing for her to do but die.
"You can guess how that would stir Ralph's chivalrous spirit of protection, and he made her tell what her story was. It seems she'd embarked with an engagement with a chorus in New York, and after the steamer had sailed a delayed letter had been handed to her canceling the contract. She had no money, no friends, nowhere to go when she landed in New York, nowhere to return even in London, since her father, a scene-shifter in the Alhambra, had died just before she sailed. You can imagine the rest of the journey — Ralph and his impetuous chivalry and sore heart, and this clinging, helpless, pretty creature looking up to him as to a beautiful young god of strength and wisdom.
"Ralph told me he didn't love her. 'How can I ever love again?' he said. 'But she loves me, and it is something to do with a disabled and wrecked life to make her happy and protect her against herself. Mary told me I was a hopelessly immature boy whom no grown woman could really love. Dottie is more immature than I — I am of importance to some one, at least.'"
Cousin Dick stopped short. His voice had been growing harsher and harsher, till it broke suddenly. "Damn it!" he exclaimed, "I wish I could cry as you're doing, Fanny; it seems to me I'll have a stroke if I don't!" He got up and strode out of the room, his hand at his wrinkled old throat. At the door he paused and said the final thing in his miserable message. "Ralph told me to say: 'I hope my parents think Dottie is young enough.'"
In the storm of the family council, afterward, Fanny Miller's clear mind failed her. She was utterly confused and broken, a rudderless ship adrift on the raging torrent of condemnation. Her husband could not find words bitter enough to characterize Ralph's conduct and the disgrace he had brought upon them.
"He may come home!" he raged. "I'll never forbid my house to my only son; but greet the girl he's married I will not, nor shall any of you! What it is to have a child who overwhelms you with shame!"
Aunt Caroline murmured agitatedly: "Oh, what will people think! We can't introduce her to any one. I don't want to speak to an actress!"
Only Cousin Dick was silent. He looked at Fanny as if he expected some action from her, but she was too distraught to plan or do anything but shudder as wave after wave of realization of what she had done swept over her. Suddenly there rose before her distracted mind the vision of Mary Wilson's shining face. "Oh!" she cried to herself, "she loved Ralph; she will tell me what to do!"
Into the white tranquillity of the little living-room she rushed like one seeking sanctuary, and poured out to the tall, strong woman the pitiable story, sobbing convulsively and clinging to her like a child. Mary sat for a time in a silence only broken by the trills and sweet high notes of the canary. When she spoke it was with a still desolation of wo that frightened Mrs. Miller into quiet.
"Between us we have ruined his life — we have utterly ruined his life —"
Fanny broke in with eager self-reproach: "No words can tell how I blame myself for what I did in —" But Mary's even voice went on: "I do not blame you; I blame myself. I knew Ralph. I knew in my heart that this was a time when your worldly wisdom was the maddest folly. I should have been strong enough to stand between you and your son and save him from your pharisaical self-confidence — but that is past! I cannot endure to think what I should have done. What we must think now is that we must in some miraculous way save some little, little remnants of his happiness. To give our whole lives to doing that is a miserably small return for the injury we have done him. No — oh, no!" she cried suddenly, rising and throwing off Mrs. Miller, who was still clinging to her, "I may not have even that poor consolation. I may not come near to him. He must never see me. He has loved me, he may love me yet, he may always love me, and the only thing I can do for him is to stand far off!"
"But you!" — she took the mother by the shoulders with an almost savage grip — "you must work for both of us! You must at least give me that small satisfaction — that you will do everything I would do in your place. You must give your every breath to shielding him from the consequences of this step, you must welcome his wife, you must make her happy in this wretched town of gossips, you must love her, you must transform her by a sheer passion of desire into a fit companion for your son! You must sustain him in fidelity to her, you must make him love her, if only for her weakness!"
The grip of her hands was so tense that the other woman almost cried out. Fanny looked at the white face, again glowing with an exaltation of devotion. She did not dare embrace her. She felt a solemn awe of her.
And it was with this awe still in her heart that she went down to the train to meet Ralph and his wife. It was Fanny Miller's body that moved, but Mary Wilson's spirit animated it. She smiled at Ralph's drawn, unhappy face; she smiled at the awkward, half-shy, half-bold creature by his side; and it was with Mary Wilson's own love shining in her eyes that she drew Dottie to her and kissed the slack mouth, stained and disfigured with rouge.
| The Story of Ralph Miller | |