Annie, "and he'll tell you himself."
So Mrs. Melville went to the door and opened it to the young man, whostood there shy and expectant.
"Mrs. Melville," he said, "I have come to tell you that I love yourAnnie, and want to make her _my_ Annie as well. I am more sorrythan I can tell you to confess that I am not able to marry at once, butplease wait a little while for me. I shall do my best to take you bothhome with me as soon as possible."
She looked for a moment silently in his face, then, throwing her armsround his neck, answered:
"And I wonder who wouldn't be glad to wait for your sweet face to thevery Day of Judgment, sir, when all must have their own at last."
Therewith she burst into tears, and, turning, led the way to the parlor.
"Here's your Hector, Annie," she said as she opened the door. "Take him,and make much of him, for I'm sure he deserves it."
Then she drew him hastily into the room, and closed the door.
"You see," Hector went on, "I must let you both know that my mother isdead against my having Annie. She thinks, of course, that I might dobetter; but I know she is only far too good for me, and that I shall bea fortunate as well as happy man the day we come together. She hasalready proved herself as true a woman as ever God made."
"She is that, sir, as I know and can testify, who have known her longerthan anybody else. But sit you down and love each other, and never mindme; I'll not be a burden to you as long as I can lift a hand to earn myown bread. And when I'm old and past work, I'll not be too proud to takewhatever you can spare me, and eat it with thankfulness."
So they sat down, and were soon making merry together.
But nothing could reconcile Mrs. Macintosh to the thought of Annie forher daughter-in-law; her pride, indignation, and disappointment weremuch too great, and they showed themselves the worse that her husbandwould not say a word against either Annie or Hector, who, he insisted,had behaved very well. He would not go a step beyond confessing that thething was not altogether as he could have wished, but upheld that itcontained ground for satisfaction. In vain he called to his wife's mindthe fact that neither she nor he were by birth or early position soimmeasurably above Annie. Nothing was of any use to calm her; nothingwould persuade her that Annie had not sought their service with theexpress purpose of carrying away her son. Her behavior proved, indeed,that Annie had done prudently in going at once home to her mother, wherepresently her late mistress sought and found her; acting royally thepart of one righteously outraged in her dearest dignity. Her worst enemycould have desired for her nothing more degrading than to see and hearher. She insisted that Hector should abjure Annie, or leave the house.Hector laid the matter before his father. He encouraged him to humor hismother as much as he could, and linger on, not going every night to seethe girl, in the hope that time might work some change. But the timepassed in bitter reproaches on the part of the mother, andexpostulations on the part of the son, and there appeared no sign of theamelioration the father had hoped for. The fact was that Mrs.Macintosh's natural vulgarity had been so pampered by what she regardedas wealth, and she had grown so puffed up, that her very person seemedto hold the door wide for the devil. For self-importance is perhaps ayet deeper root of all evil than even the love of money. Any deep,honest affection might have made it too hot for the devil, but in herheart there was little room for such a love. She seemed to believe innothing but mode and fashion, to care for nothing but what she called"the thing." She grew in self-bulk, and gathered more and more weight inher own esteem: she wore yet showier and more vulgar clothes, andactually cultivated a slang that soon bade farewell to delicacy, so thatshe sank and she sank, and she ate and she drank, until at last sheimpressed her good-natured clergyman himself as one but a very littleabove the beasts that perish--if, indeed, she was in any respect equalto a good, conscientious dog! She retained, however, this much respectfor her son, for which that son gave her little thanks, that by-and-byshe limited herself to ex-pending all her contempt upon Annie, andtoward Hector settled into a dogged silence, where upon he, finding itimpossible to make any progress toward an understanding where he couldnot even get a reply, at last gave up the attempt and became as silentas she.
To poor Annie it was a terrible thought that she should thus have comebetween mother and son; but she remembered that she had read of motherswho without cause had even hated their own flesh, and how much the moremight not she who knew her ambitions and designs so utterly opposed tothe desires of her son?
And thereupon all at once awoke in Annie the motherhood that liesdeepest of all in the heart of every good woman, making her know inherself that, his mother having forsaken him, she had no choice but takehim up and be to him henceforward both wife and mother. What remains ofmy story will perhaps serve to show how far she succeeded in fulfillingthis her vow.
At last Mr. Macintosh saw that things could not thus continue, and thathe had better accept an offer made him some time before by a Londoncorrespondent--to take Hector into his banking-house and give him theopportunity of widening his experience and knowledge of business; andHector, on his part, was eager to accept the proposal. The salaryoffered for his services was certainly not a very liberal one, but thechief attraction was that the hours were even shorter than they had beenwith his father, and would yet enlarge his liberty of an evening.Hector's delights, as we have seen, had always lain in literature, andin that direction the labor in him naturally sought an outlet. Now thereseemed a promise of his being able to pursue it yet more devotedly thanbefore: who could tell but he might ere long produce something thatpeople might care to read? Some publisher might even care to put it inprint, and people might care to buy it! That would start him in a moregenuine way of living, and he might the sooner be able to marryAnnie--an aspiration surely legitimate and not too ambitious. He had hada good education, and considered himself to be ably equipped. It wastrue he had not been to either Oxford or Cambridge, but he had enjoyedthe advantages possessed by a Scotch university even over an Englishone, consisting mainly in the freedom of an unhampered development.Since then he had read largely, and had cultivated naturally widesympathies. As his vehicle for utterance, we have already seen that hehad a great attraction to verse, and had long held and argued that thebest training for effective prose was exercise in the fetters ofverse--a conviction in which he had lived long enough to confirmhimself, and perhaps one or two besides.
His relations with his mother, and consequent impediments to seeingAnnie, took away the sting of having to part with her for awhile; and,when he finally closed with the offer, she at once resumed herapplication for a place in the High School, and was soon accepted, forthere were not a few in the town capable of doing justice to her fitnessfor the office; so that now she had the joy not merely of being able tolive with her mother as before, and of contributing to her income, butof knowing at the same time that she lived in a like atmosphere withHector, where her growth in the knowledge of literature, and herexperience in the world of thought, would be gradually fitting her for acompanion to him whom she continued to regard as so much above her. Hermarked receptivity in the matter of verse, and her intrinsicdiscrimination of nature and character in it, became in her, at length,as they grew, sustaining forces, enlarging her powers both of sympathyand judgment, so that soon she came to feel, in reading certain of thebest writers, as if she and Hector were looking over the same booktogether, reading and pondering it as one, simultaneously seeing whatthe writer meant and felt and would have them see and feel. So that, bythe new intervention of space, they were in no sense or degreeseparated, but rather brought by it actually, that is, spiritually,nearer to each other. Also Hector wrote to her regularly on a certainday of every week, and very rarely disappointed her of her expectedletter, in which he uttered his thoughts and feelings more freely thanhe had ever been able to do in conversation. This also was a gain toher, for thus she went on to know him better and better, rising rapidlynearer to his level of intellectual development, while already she wasmore than his equal i
n the moral development which lies at the root ofall capacity for intellectual growth. So Annie grew, as surely--withoutirreverence I may say--in favor both with God and man; for at the sametime she grew constantly in that loveliest of all things--humanity.
Nor was Hector left without similar consolation in his life, althoughpassed apart from Annie. For, not to mention the growing pleasure thathe derived from poring over Annie's childlike letters--and here I wouldbeg my reader to note the essential distinction betwixt childish andchildlike--full of the keenest perceptions and the happiest phrases, hehad soon come to make the acquaintance of a kindred spirit, a man whom,indeed, it took a long time really to know, but who, being from thefirst attracted to him, was soon running down the inclined plane ofacquaintanceship with rapidly increasing velocity toward something farbetter than mere acquaintance: nor was