Boston a novel
Mother is going to fight from now on; Mother holds her convictions with
just the same intensity that you hold yours, and something inside her
compels utterance. It is that stern terrible thing we call our Puritan
conscience. It is out of fashion at the moment, but it takes new forms,
it has a rebirth, and does not rest until it has made some impression
on the world--some change such as the independence of the colonies, or
the abolition of slavery, or the outlawing of war, or the setting free
of labor. And then the next generation forgets about the conflict, and
says how famous Boston is, what great people it has produced! And their
grandchildren become the aristocracy, and want everything to stay as it
is!”
XV
Cornelia had her own proposition, which she had been thinking
over for several months. “I will come up to town at once and get
a little apartment, and Betty can come live with me. That will be
respectable--it will even tend to make your runaway grandmother all
right. And I’m sure I can guide Betty and keep her from going to
extremes. It is what she herself has been begging me to do, and I know
she will be happy.”
“Thank you,” said Deborah, with a touch of sarcasm. “To make the
children happy is the one duty of parents under the new dispensation.
But some of us parents are old-fashioned, and think about our
children’s souls.”
“Yes, my dear, and it may be that the saving of Betty’s soul depends
upon her believing everything that is preached at Trinity--even
though, as I suspect, the preacher does not believe it himself. But
let us be practical about the matter. What will you do with the child?
Ordinarily, when daughters threaten to run wild you send them off to
Europe with an aunt, and they look at cathedrals and paintings for a
year, and that is cultural. But now your war is in the way, so the only
place to send her is out west, and she would see only rocks and rivers,
which are not so cultural. Of course you can keep her shut up--make a
prisoner of her by force--but that would only harden her spirit and
drive her to extremes. Also, it would mean an open scandal, because
your servants would know, and it would be all over the Back Bay in a
night, and everybody would be certain the child had done something far
worse than talk radicalism. Moreover, you can only keep her for a short
while--then she will be of age, and you will lose your hold on her.”
“We can disinherit her.”
“Yes, of course; but she would have my property--”
“I think, Mother, you ought to be informed about that.” It was Rupert
breaking in--since it was a banker’s affair. “You have no property,
only an income of five thousand a year from the estate.”
“Well, Rupert, I have lived upon four hundred a year for the past year
and a half--”
“Mother, you don’t mean it!” Impossible for the most reticent daughter
to encounter such a statement with silence!
“What else have I had? I have lived on it, and even saved a little. And
now if I come up to town and take my income of five thousand a year,
with what has been accumulating, Betty and I will be rich.”
“You would not be able to pay for the child’s clothes!”
“Well, Deborah, maybe you know your daughter better than I, but my
guess is Betty would learn to make her own clothes quite cheerfully.
Will you give me a chance to ask her?”
“Most certainly not! In spite of your ridicule, I believe in my
religion, and in a little decency and decorum. I shall not give up my
daughter to become an anarchist and atheist--nor even a socialist and
infidel--nor yet a saint who believes in free love.”
“Well put, Deborah--we are both of us developing what Broadway would
call the ‘punch.’ But put yourself in my place just a moment. I served
your father faithfully for forty years, and conscientiously refrained
from doing any of the things which made him angry. I gave life to
three of you girls, and helped to find you husbands of the sort I knew
your father wanted you to have. If you have any complaint as to your
share in husbands, you have been too proud to make it to me. Have you,
Deborah?” Cornelia paused, and looked at the solemn Rupert with a
twinkle in her eye. Then she continued, “You both have what you want.
But I have very little; I am old and lonely, and an object of sympathy.
There are eleven grandchildren--no one of whom would have been in the
world except for me. I put it to your sense of justice--may I not ask
for one of the eleven to keep me company in my old age?”
It was turning Deborah’s own weapons against her, and Deborah could not
help being disturbed. “I think you would have shown better judgment if
you had chosen one of Clara’s eight, rather than one of my two.”
“Perhaps that is so. But I did not choose Betty--she chose me; or
rather, some fate did it, there is an affinity between us. I assure
you, Deborah, upon my honor, I had no thought of causing this to
happen. But it has happened, and we have to admit it.”
“Never!” cried Deborah. Her lips were set in that expression which
Cornelia had seen ten thousand times upon the face of Josiah Quincy
Thornwell. It was recorded for all time in the paintings of four
governors in the music-room at “Hillview.”
Cornelia turned to her son-in-law. “Is that your decision also?”
Rupert hung on to that caution which is such an excellent thing in
“in-laws.” “Mother, I hope you will not go to any extreme--”
Cornelia laughed. “First I have to make sure what you and Deborah plan
to do to Betty.”
“We plan to do our duty as parents, to compel our child to behave
herself!” It was Deborah, with great vehemence.
“Do you mean that she must believe what you believe--even though she
doesn’t? Or do you mean that she must say that she believes what she
doesn’t believe? Or will you be content if she agrees to say nothing
about her beliefs?”
“That is what we commanded her to do, and she refused.”
“Are you sure you made the distinction? Are you sure you didn’t ask
her to stop believing? I suspect you were so horrified and angry,
you didn’t know exactly what you were demanding.” And Cornelia rose,
saying, “I will try to supply a little wisdom and good temper for you.
To-morrow I will go up to town and put up at a hotel, and get some
clothes, so as not to disgrace you, and in the evening I will call at
the house, and have a talk with my grandchild, and persuade her to be
more fair than her parents.”
“You must not feel that way about us, Mother!” It was Rupert, still
trying for a compromise.
“There is no sense in saying any more to-night, Rupert. We have argued
too much, for Thornwells. It is because I am not really ‘Boston,’ that
I do this vulgar thing of trying to talk things out. But I love Betty,
and cannot bear to see her spirit bruised. I will do the best I can,
and advise her to suppress her eager young ideas on marriage, and
private property, and war, and whatever else you object to--until she
is of age, and her own legal mistress.”
Cornelia took her shawl and started to put it on. “Mother! That thing
is all wet! Let me give you my coat!”
“It is quite all right, there will be a good hot stove where I am
going.”
“But Mother, you must have dinner with us!”
“My friends will give me something to eat when I get home. I could not
eat now.”
She saw tears start in Deborah’s eyes again, and that was as it should
be. When Rupert labored to persuade his mother-in-law to ride to Boston
with them, she answered that she had reasons for preferring the train;
then she started towards the door. “Good-by, my children.”
Rupert took up his coat and followed her. “At least you will let us
drive you to where you are living, Mother.”
“Thank you, but I am able to walk.”
“But Mother, that is absurd--it is storming!”
“I have walked to my work for a year and a half, through every sort of
storm--at six-thirty in the morning, and again in the evening--and have
not yet missed a day.”
So Cornelia unlocked the door and went out; Rupert and Deborah both
following, arguing and pleading with her in low, decorous tones, all
the way to the street. But she set her lips tight, and when Rupert
tried to take her hand and lead her to the car, she withheld it,
saying once more, “Good-by, my children,” and hurrying away into the
snow-haunted darkness.
XVI
The next evening, according to her promise, Cornelia called at the
Alvin mansion on Commonwealth Avenue, dressed like a nice, quiet
old lady of the social reform or “blue-stocking” type. She rang the
bell with some trepidation, not quite certain whether she would be
admitted; but she found an amazing situation--the family rows all
settled, Betty out of prison and back at Miss Wilson’s, and the entire
Thornwell clan assembled to welcome home the runaway grandmother! To
overwhelm her with kindness, with beauty, tact and charm, to afford her
a demonstration of respectability, and make her realize its advantages
over anarchism, atheism and free love!
There was Clara, in the radiance of her eighth maternity, and her
husband, James Scatterbridge, shining with the extra millions he had
made; and Alice, never more elegant, never more gracious, with no trace
of a scandal or a hysteric about her; her husband, Henry Winters,
jewel upon the finger of the legal profession; Deborah and Rupert, all
courtesy and smiles; Betty, a little pale after a cyclone of emotions,
but none the less lovely for that; Betty’s older sister, Priscilla;
Great-uncle Abner, and his son, Uncle Quincy--pronounced as if he
were a disease of the throat. All of them in their most honorable
costumes, all so amiable--not one hint of rebuke or complaint, not even
a tactless slip--unless you count Great-uncle Abner, whose deaf man’s
voice boomed through the drawing-room; “Well, well, Cornelia, they tell
me you’ve been making money!”
They had learned their lesson, that was the long and short of it; they
would return to dignity and reserve and good manners--to “old Boston”;
and Cornelia would return with them, and Betty also. There would be no
more quarrels, no more scenes, no more scandals and “talking out” of
things, no more anarchism, atheism, or free love!
There was a buzz of conversation, family news, compliments and
courtesies. When would Cornelia come to see her new grandson? Had she
heard of the fine record Alice’s son had made at St. Mark’s? Would she
hear about Uncle Quincy’s chess wonder? “How is your gout, Abner?” “How
is the new wing coming on, James?” So many polite and pleasant things
to talk about, that it was only near the end of the evening that she
got a few words alone with Betty.
“Oh, Grannie, how on earth did you do it?”
“I don’t know, dear--what did I do?”
“You completely tamed Mother and Father. They came back this morning as
nice as pie.”
“I guess they just had a little time to think things over, and realize
how much they loved you.” Cornelia was going to be tactful too!
“Well, yesterday Mother wouldn’t hear to reason at all: I must promise
to never believe anything she disapproved of, I must never talk about
such things to anybody, and must never look at such a book! Of course
I couldn’t promise all that, could I, Grannie? You can’t imagine how
dreadful I felt, to have to tell Mother and Father that I wouldn’t obey
them! So I thought I was going to have to stay in my room till I didn’t
know when. But after they had talked with you, all they wanted was for
me not to disgrace them publicly.”
Cornelia was tempted to say that Rupert and Deborah had found the older
generation so much worse than the younger, that it had frightened them.
But no, she was going to be tactful! “I plan to get a little apartment,
dear, and you can come see me, and we’ll keep our thoughts to
ourselves, and not give the family anything more to worry over.” Thus