Mrs. Ormsby's Case

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 10, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 15.

Mrs. Ormsby's Case.

GRANDMA ORMSBY had made up her mind, and when that clever woman did this you may rest assured something was to come of it.

Though a grandmother in fact, as well as in name, her appearance was not in the least venerable. To be sure, Time's frosty breath had left silvery gleams on her ebon hair, and tinged her cheek with a ruddier glow, still she was in the prime of life, and possessed everything to make length of days desirable.

True, she had had trials in the past, nor was the present free from care and anxiety. However, she was the sort of woman to "Rise to the level of the hour," be that hour's need great or small.

Yes, Martha Washington Ormsby had made up her mind. Not without careful consideration, and not without gravely consulting those in whose good sense, and on whose sound judgment, she placed implicit reliance.

To these friends she had said: "My plans are all laid now, and we are pledged to secrecy, are we not? What you see and hear goes no farther."

"No farther," they each and all responded.

After the settlement of so weighty a matter she felt free to anticipate Alrina's arrival.

Alrina, the youngest of three daughters, had been the first to marry. She was now thirty-two. At the early age of fifteen she had left all for love's sweet sake and accompanied Pemberton Lorton, aged twenty, to his home in a far western city.

After what seemed centuries of separation Mrs. Ormsby visited her daughter. This visit, paid soon after the sods greened over Mr. Ormsby's grave, somewhat cheered her widowed heart; still there were circumstances connected with it which she could never recall without pain. The hour was approaching, however, in which she hoped to triumph over a great wrong. This was no personal injury, understand. You'll find out all about it as my story runs on.

Meeting her daughter and son-in-law at the depot, Mrs. Ormsby met also a disappointment. The babe whose red-gold curls a red-gold sunset bathed, as he was handed into the carriage, was one of the sweetest cherubs out of the skies; still she regretted not seeing the older children.

"I thought you meant to bring them all," she said.

"Bring them all?" exclaimed Pemberton.

"Bring seven!" gasped Alrina.

"Yes," answered Mrs. Ormsby. "I expected them, and I wanted them. I congratulated myself on your having no one to leave them with."

"Aunt Di took them in charge," replied Pemberton. "They all love her so dearly and they were pleased to death to get rid of us."

"Now Pem!" put in Alrina, always taking her husband's funny sayings literally, or rather, sayings that were meant to be funny. "Mattie and Pembie felt badly I'm sure, and as for Burnie, he cried so we had to shame him before them all. Yes, ma, we shamed him before Di's beau, the Professor, and other friends gathered to see us off."

"The more shame for you!" These words burned on Mrs. Ormsby's lips as well as in her heart, yet no, she would not give them utterance. This home-coming, especially this drive through willowy ways where clover breaths blew and an insect choir piped, should have nothing to mar its innocent joy. "Time enough,—time enough," reflected Mrs. Ormsby, and on the whole was glad that the elder children had not accompanied their parents. Their absence rendered a part she intended playing less difficult, and allowed a larger scope for her plans.

Alrina Lorton found the landscape's features altered as well as the faces of those whom she knew in early life. The place was putting on town-bred airs. Bran new dwellings, reared with the grotesqueness of the latest architectural craze, attitudinalized on sites where in childhood she had linked dandelion chains and chased the glittering-winged butterfly.

In addition to this there were new acquaintances her mother and sisters had formed, as well as the old friends she remembered so well and loved so dearly, anxious to be introduced, or "dying" to see her.

One of the former, occupying a house recently built adjoining the Ormsby grounds, came in the day after her arrival.

Mrs. Duvault was a very old lady, and patted Alrina's cheek caressingly as she clasped her hand in greeting.

"You resemble your father, my dear child," she said, surveying her with keen but kind eyes, "and I am sure you are as good."

"Good!" laughed Mrs. Ormsby derisively; "just wait till you see her in one of her tantrums."

Mrs. Lorton was painfully conscious of being given to tantrums, but how could her mother be so cruel as to expose her before this charming old lady whose good opinion she coveted.

"So this is your baby, is it?" said Gen. Duvault, entering at this moment and being duly introduced.

Poor Rina's heart was sore, her eyes full of tears; no wonder she hung her head under the old soldier's gaze.

"Did you ever in all your life see stronger proofs of temper?" exclaimed Mrs. Ormsby. "Alrina, if you don't learn to behave better, I'll find out a way to make you."

"I—I must see after the baby," gasped Rina, between a sob and a groan, making at the same time a tear-blinded rush for the door.

"You must do no such thing," replied Mrs. Ormsby sternly. "Bridget has him. She knows how to take care of children. You're to stay where you are. You're not to disgrace me further by rushing from the room in that unseemly manner."

Mrs. Lorton remained, but the pleasure she expected to derive from the society of this delightful couple gave way to torturing pain.

Recollections of past tenderness only rendered her agony more acute. It was formerly a point with Mrs. Ormsby never to expose her children's faults, even in the retirement of the family circle. She rarely inflicted punishment, invariably admonished in private, and, so far as she was able, treated her husband and her girls as courteously as she treated her guests.

Alrina Lorton wondered over this change in a mother still too young to have become childish. She wondered more and more as the days ran by.

Mrs. Ormsby and her widow daughter, Mrs. Sixty, kept open house, and in the crowds coming and going Alrina escaped censure; but in the presence of those whom the mother held in highest esteem, and whose good opinion she herself coveted, she was continually in disgrace. If dress, manner, conversation escaped criticism, the sins of the past rose up to confront her. True, those in whose society she was especially humiliated, never noticed directly any attack upon her, yet they beamed delightedly on her mother, as if earth did not contain her counterpart.

Nor did Mr. Lorton escape, although Mrs. Ormsby was not, as he termed it, "as hard after" him, as after Rina. Apart from the respect and esteem in which he held his mother-in-law, there were excellent reasons for—quoting him again—"not raising a rumpus." Still, such a state of affairs was far from agreeable.

One day, three weeks after their arrival, Mrs. Ormsby surprised her daughter in a torrent of tears.

After being treated with unusual severity, that too in the presence of her mother's revered pastor, she sought refuge in her own apartment where her tortured heart found relief in a very storm of sobs, a perfect deluge of weeping.

"What's the matter?"

In answer to this cool, calm inquiry from her mother's lips, Mrs. Lorton raised her head.

"Need you ask?" she replied, something of her father's masterful spirit flashing from her tear-drenched eyes. "Can you ask—you, who ever since my arrival have done all in your power to mortify me in the presence of those whose good opinion I value—you, who to-day turned my holiest feelings into ridicule, and burlesqued the natural impulses of my being—you frigidly ask, 'What's the matter?'"

"Are you my daughter, or not?" inquired Mrs. Ormsby haughtily.

Having borne in silence until she could bear no more, Mrs. Lorton, acknowledging the relationship, denied this stern parent's right to make life a burden.

"Do you mean to tell your mother she has no right to exercise authority in the correction of her children's faults?" returned Mrs. Ormsby even more severely than before.

"You must remember I am no longer a child," replied her daughter. "I am a married woman."

"Granted," returned Mrs. Ormsby; "but since I sustain the same relationship I did in your infancy, and since, although you have matured, I have matured doubly, it is my right, my burden duty to endeavor to correct your faults. Do you deny that right? Do you defy me?"

During this conversation poor Mrs. Lorton's cheeks had burned and iced by turns, her lovely eyes flashed and besought alternately; now, while she answered, they were blue as a storm-cloud in which lightnings sleep.

"It is not my desire to rebel against your authority, mother, but I do most emphatically deny your right to drag my faults to the light, to bring me to shame and confusion of face before your guests."

Here the dear woman broke down completely. She was after all only a chidden child, hiding her wet face upon the couch on which her baby slept.

"Alrina!"

There was a pressure of arms around her neck, and other tears beside her own on her cheeks.

"Mother!"

"Softly! Don't cry any more, you'll waken baby. Besides, I've a confession to make. Be quiet and listen."

Martha Washington Ormsby had acted her part and acted well, what a relief to know the time had arrived in which to lay it aside and forever.

Referring to a subject they had discussed during her visit west and so disagreed upon it that it was deemed expedient to drop it, Mrs. Ormsby said:—

"My dear girl, I have treated you precisely as you treat your children. Such measure as you mete them has been meted you. You accused me of turning your holiest feelings into ridicule and burlesquing the natural impulses of your being. You have also denied a mother's right to drag her children's faults to the light and bring them to shame and confusion of face before her guests. Yet you, Alrina, pursue the same course with the little ones God has given you. Nor is Pemberton less guilty. Even at the moment of separation, you planted thorns in one tiny breast that may rankle there for years. My child, the ordeal has been a trying one, but in no other way could you be enabled to see your error, and endeavor, God helping you, to correct it."

Mrs. Ormsby spoke gently, sadly, going on to tell how often she had found Mattie, Alrina's sweet young daughter, weeping as bitterly as she had wept that day, and how Pemberton, noble, sensitive boy, was afraid to enter the room, or to eat at the table where there were guests, because of her unjust, fault-finding disposition.

A west wind blowing, a dip of fruity boughs on the window-ledge, bird songs thrilling in the distance, near garden scents wandering into the room, mother and daughter in each others arms. Martha Washington Ormsby had gained her case.—Arthur's Home Magazine.