Mrs. Williams

“ Williams, I beg you will not—" cried Rita, endeavoring to withdraw her hand.
"You shall listen to me," he cried, half in anger, half pleadingly. "I have loved you as tenderly and unselfishly as woman ever was loved, since I first knew you. I know I am not worthy of you, but I am the equal of any other man, and you shall treat me fairly."
The girl, in alarm, struggled to free herself from his grasp, but he held her and continued:—
"No other man can give you the love I feel for you, and you shall respond to it."
"It is impossible, Mr. Williams," she said pleadingly. "You do not know all. ”

“ John Williams from giving herself up to thinking, or from thinking about anything but her own private affairs. Not that Mrs. Williams gave herself up to scrubbing doors and windows and cleaning pots and pans with her own hands, but she was "taken up" all the same. When Christ was a babe on earth there was no room for him in the inn, so to-day many a heart is so full that Christ and his cause are turned out. If a heart is full how can it hold more? Do not suppose that there was no thinking done by Mrs. Williams. She superintended all her work and did much of her own sewing ”

“ Williams was elaborate throughout; all her housekeeping was squared up to certain fine lines. If she ever had a morsel of time from these things, stern necessity compelled her to spend it in fancy work; for tidies, and soft pillows, and bracket-covers, and stand-covers, and mats were indispensable. When Mrs. Williams was asked to subscribe for "Woman's Work for Woman," she assured them that she knew already all about woman's work that she desired to.
It was done at last—the spring sewing and the house cleaning, and the summer heats had come. ”

“ It’s an awkward subject to enter on at all with a gentleman, poor Mrs. Williams being in the condition she was.”
“I heard Doctor Woolley say she was very ill.”
“It’s a funny thing, Elsie, but many a time I’ve felt a presentiment like. I’ve looked at Mrs. Williams, and seen death in her face. And that Nellie Simmons, she told me she’d had a most peculiar dream about Mrs. Williams one night. Saw her lying all over blood, she said, and it quite scared her. I knew then what it meant, though I told Nellie not to be a silly gurl. But dreams can’t lie, as they say, not if they’re a certain sort.” ”

“ A most illuminating interview followed. Mr. Williams was found to be an intelligent though melancholy and self-centered man. The couple had married somewhat late in life, it being Mrs. Williams' second marriage. She had been strongly influenced by her mother to marry him and had never had any real affection for him. It became very evident from his story that the strongly developed egotism of both the husband and wife had made a real marriage impossible between them, and the visitor became convinced of the genuineness of Mr. ”

“ Within, Mrs. Martin was nervously awaiting her visitor's knock. She had taken off her kitchen apron and smoothed her hair down with her hands. But no knock was [Pg 118] heard, for Mrs. Williams placidly continued her survey of the house and its surroundings, until the voice of her hostess interrupted her.
"Why, Mrs. Williams! Have you been standin' out here all this time? I must be losin' my hearin' when I can't hear a person knockin' at the door."
"Nothin's the matter with your hearin'," responded Mrs. Williams, following her hostess into the shady parlor ”

“ Williams and I have written acrostics on each other, and she hoped that she should have "no reason to regret Miss Isola's recovery, by its depriving her of our begun correspondence." Emma stayed a month with us, and has gone back (in tolerable health) to her long home, for she comes not again for a twelvemonth. I amused Mrs. Williams with an occurrence on our road to Enfield. We travelled with one of those troublesome fellow-passengers in a stage-coach, that is called a well-informed man. ”

“ Williams were ever in love with each other?"
"It is not," replied Mr. Dana, who began to take courage under the skilful peroration of his chief. "I was never on any terms with Mrs. Williams, when she was Miss Latham, but those of the very slightest, and, of course, most respectful acquaintance. I don't believe we ever exchanged a dozen words."
"I believe you," murmured Blanche Livermore, who sat next to me, and whose unruly tongue nothing could long subdue; and indeed [Pg 34] we had none of us supposed that Loulie Latham conducted her love-affairs by means of conversation. ”

“ Miss Williams did so. As soon as she was fairly started and alone in the fly, she opened it, with hands slightly trembling, for she was touched by the persistence of the good rector, and his faithfulness to her, a poor governess, when he might have married, as they said in his neighborhood, "anybody." He would never marry any body now—he was dying. ”

“ That must be the New York manner, and, consequently, she may be very much in earnest."
"It isn't given to every woman to be attractive all the time just because she looks in earnest, as it is to you, dearest. But you musn't be too severe on the others."
"On the contrary, I think I shall like Mrs. Williams. She may teach us to be practical. You know that is what your friends would like to have me help you to be, Wilbur." ”

“ She was tensely interested in the fact that no person—and “person” was shaded by something subtle in her manner and voice to mean no woman—had ever been loyal to Williams. There was some kind of a story about how his own mother, at some time or other, had been fearfully prejudiced against him.
And I knew that deep within this tragic Sicilian was love of Williams—though she slid the word “love” scornfully from her lips when it came casually into her remarks.
Not knowing Williams, she had been alarmed by what Raikes and Davenant planned. ”

“ In 1913, with his faithful companion, he undertook the fourth journey to England and Wales, from which he was not to return. While traveling in England and meeting lecture appointments, his strength suddenly failed, and he returned to Mrs. Williams' old home in Wales where he died within a few days. The end came in the very house where youth's springtime began, with all its joyful promise. A fruitful life was finished. ”

“ Williams. “It transformed a bright and happy woman—happy—despite their impending poverty—in her husband’s love, into a brokenhearted, crushed and desolate widow, whose only incentive to drag her weary way through life was the necessity of caring for her fatherless little ones. It was worse than murder, sir, for it prolonged for years the suffering of a human heart.”
For a moment he paused, and in the stillness that ensued the doctor could be heard muttering dreadful words, as if to himself. Indeed, he could not trust himself to look at Mr. Jordan, who sat as motionless as if turned to stone. ”

“ Williams, and desired she would examine Little Two-Shoes, and see whether she was qualified for the Office.——— This was done, and Mrs. Williams made the following Report in her Favour, namely, that Little Margery was the best Scholar, and had the best Head, and the best Heart of any one she had examined. All the Country had a great Opinion of Mrs. Willams, and this Character gave them also a great Opinion of Mrs. Margery; for so we must now call her. ”

“ Cis is the mistress of arts and wiles. She sports with the hearts of men. Miss Foster vacillated between the two ideals, and I have no doubt—it was springtime then—wore a pink cotton frock, ironed stiffly, wonderfully frilled.
Beside Cis Foster was another name in another writing, John Emmanuel Williams. He used to come there on Sunday evenings when Mrs. Foster, growing oldish now and a little worn, stayed at home; when Mr. Foster smoked his pipe with a secure feeling that one churchgoing of a Sunday was enough for any man; when the boys, young scamps, were birds'-nesting in the woods. ”

“ Williams is a quiet young man who only desires to be left alone to earn his living respectably at the Bar, and see there if he cannot redress the balance in the favour of women. But there is something you could do for me, and it is for that I came to see you to-day—by the bye, we have both let our tea grow cold, but for goodness' sake don't order any more on my account, or else your parlour-maid will be coming in and out and will see that I've been crying and you look flushed. ”

“ Williams," said he kindly, "we all feel that you are rapidly sinking; do you die happy? Do you feel that there is a Jesus in heaven, through whose mediation you will be saved?"
There was a rustling of the bed-clothes, a faint murmur, and the sufferer languidly turned her eyes upon the speaker. A dimness was in those sunken orbs; a clamminess upon her wan brow, and her breast heaved wildly beneath the linen that lay in snowy waves across it. But she did not appear to have heard the inquiry of the minister.
"The Widow White—has she not come yet? ”

“ Added to these reasons of state was a passionate love on the part of Williams of which any woman might have been proud. Williams was, ordinarily, sure-footed, and would have made fewer mistakes in his wooing had his love been less feverish. He also had a great fund of common-sense, but love is inimical to that rare commodity, and under the blind god's distorting influence the levelest head will, in time, become conical. ”

“ Surely, thought Williams, the girl could not kill a mouse. Where, then, would she find strength to kill a man? But she told him, in meagre outline, her story, and he learned that a great, self-controlled, modest strength nestled side by side with ineffable gentleness in the heart of this young girl; and that was the moment of Roger Williams's undoing, and the beginning of Rita's woe. ”

“ Even Miss Webster grew to like him, partly because he ignored the possibility of her doing otherwise, partly because his vital frank personality was irresistible. She even invited him informally to dinner; and after a time he joked and guyed her as if she were a school-girl, which pleased her mightily. Of Miss Williams he was sincerely fond.
"You are so jolly companionable, don't you know," he would say to her. "Most girls are bores; don't know enough to have anything to talk about, and want to be flattered and flirted with all the time. ”

“ When I felt so bad and it was hard to keep the tears back I took my doll Jane (I had named her after the dear, kind cabin maid) in my arms, rocking and singing some of my old French songs my mother had taught me. When Elizabeth looked at me I said, "Now I am getting patience." Soon the captain came in, saying, "Is this the little girl that is homesick?" I said, "Oh no, I'm not homesick any more. I have got patience." He laughed heartily. Elizabeth explained to him what I meant. He said, "No don't you get homesick any more. I will take you home next April on this old steamboat of mine. ”

“ And when I read a short story by you in which a young man sees a [196] pretty girl, and begins to talk to her without being introduced to her, and then marries her before luncheon—and finds he's married a Balkan Princess—good-night! I just wonder why people stand for your books; that's all."
"So do I," said Williams, much embarrassed. "I wouldn't stand for them myself."
"Why," continued Green warmly, "I read a story of yours in some magazine the other day, in which a young man sees a pretty girl for the first time in his life and is married to her inside of three quarters of an hour! ”

“ Sir Charles Williams in 1747 wrote that, in spite of her profession that in her eyes no woman ought to meddle in the affairs of state, he ventured to prophecy, she would rule the whole land in the name of her unfortunate husband. ”

“ His sister—there could be no doubt that she was his sister—had a wide-eyed trustfulness and wonder in her eyes. She was a blonde little thing, not yet in bloom; hipless and breastless. In the midst of dark robust maidens who bloomed rapidly she seemed pathetically immature, faded if not blighted ”

“ Without opening the book, Williams began slowly:
“Man that is born of woman has but a short time to live and is full of misery. He comes up and is cut down like a flower. He flees as from a shadow, and never continues in one place. ”

“ At times I feel myself very clever. Guided a little, too, by her poised fierceness, the fierceness of eyes and voice, I surmised that she had no sympathy with doing anything for Williams.
For one thing, he had humiliated her father. I had no reason then for not supposing that Davenant was some one else. For a more important thing, Williams had treated her as if her cloak did actually confer invisibility; and, in my experience, nothing more enrages a woman than being ignored. ”

“ She now wanted Williams to propose marriage to her, but had begun to doubt his ever doing so. He continued to look at her meaningly, and to lay his rather desiccated hand from time to time on her shoulder, or upon the thin fabric of her sleeve, with a lingering, caressing touch. Elsie, however, had inspired too many men to such demonstrations to feel elated by them, and her employer’s proximity roused in her little or no physical response. ”

“ Williams shrugged his shoulders.
“Come, Elsie, let’s understand one another. You’re not ignorant, a girl like you must have had half a dozen men after her. And then what about that doctor fellow—Woolley?” ”

“ In the course of the next few minutes Williams was surprised to discover the words included in the vocabulary of so majestic a woman as Antonia. There was nothing she did not call her sister-in-law, although she ended each sentence with an assertion that she wouldn't really do it.
"I wouldn't count on that," said Williams. "Most people are restrained by the opinion of their social group; but, as Mrs. Southgate says, she doesn't seem to have any group."
"Do you forget there is such a thing as a moral sense?" asked Antonia. ”