Читать книгу Mr. Waddy's Return онлайн

10 страница из 62

Janeway remained her friend. He alone knew her secret. She was one of those strangely spiritual beings who interfere like dreamy visions in the inventive, busy business of Yankee life. She had a great, ennobling sorrow. Her lover had been a martyr of two religions. He had died for his country and for his friend. It may be said he died instinctively; but Mary knew that only the noble and the brave have noble and brave instincts.

To most people, Mary was only a pale schoolmistress. One person, however, met her on terms of devoted respect. Governor Janeway, the pre-eminently practical and successful man, found in her society what he found not with his gorgeous wife. She became the Cassandra of young Janeway—who went to the bad, it is true, but long after her death—and the kindly guide of his infant child.

Late in life she married Benajah Waddy, the youngest brother of the three. Janeway had made him bookkeeper, secretary, agent, but he had finally, after his mother’s death, dwindled into the old shop. Mary, considering herself his brother’s widow, came to a Hebraical, religious conclusion as to her duty. With entire simplicity of heart, she told Benajah that they ought to be married. As a matter of course, they were. The usual wife found, also, in process of time, their only son, Benajah, and married him. These both died, leaving their only son, Ira Waddy, to the charge of his aged and widowed grandmother, Mary, widow in heart of Ira the First.

Правообладателям