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Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - By the Light of the Soul

M >> Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> By the Light of the Soul




"But I know your father wouldn't have written for you to come unless
he wasn't well and wanted to see you," said Aunt Maria. "I shouldn't
be a mite surprised, too, if he suspected that Ida would write you
not to come, and thought he'd get ahead of her."

Aunt Maria was right. In the next mail came a letter from Ida, saying
that she supposed Maria would not think she could come home for such
a short vacation, especially a she had to stay a little longer in
Amity for the wedding, and how sorry they all were, and how they
should look forward to the long summer vacation.

"She doesn't say a word about father's being ill," said Maria.

"Of course she doesn't! She knew perfectly well that if she did you
would go home whether or no; or maybe she hasn't got eyes for
anything aside from herself to see that he is sick."

Maria grew so uneasy about her father that she engaged a substitute
and went home two days before her vacation actually commenced. She
sent a telegram, saying that she was coming, and on what train she
should arrive. Evelyn met her at the station in Edgham. She had
grown, and was nearly as tall as Maria, although only a child. She
was fairly dancing with pleasurable expectation on the platform, with
the uncertain grace of a butterfly over a rose, when Maria caught
sight of her. Evelyn was a remarkably beautiful little girl. She had
her mother's color and dimples, with none of her hardness. Her
forehead, for some odd reason, was high and serious, like Maria's
own, and Maria's own mother's. Her dark hair was tied with a crisp
white bow, and she was charmingly dressed in red from head to foot--a
red frock, red coat, and red hat. Ida could at least plead, in
extenuation of her faults of life, that she had done her very best to
clothe those around her with beauty and grace. When Maria got off the
car, Evelyn made one leap towards her, and her slender, red-clad arms
went around her neck. She hugged and kissed her with a passionate
fervor odd to see in a child. Her charming face was all convulsed
with emotion.

"Oh, sister!" she said. "Oh, sister!"

Maria kissed her fondly. "Sister's darling," she said. Then she put
her gently away. "Sister has to get out her trunk-check and see to
getting a carriage," she said.

"Mamma has gone to New York," said Evelyn, "and papa has not got home
yet. He comes on the next train. He told me to come and meet you."

Maria, after she had seen to her baggage and was seated in the livery
carriage with Evelyn, asked how her father was. "Is father ill,
dear?" she said.

Evelyn looked at her with surprise. "Why, no, sister, I don't think
so," she replied. "Mamma hasn't said anything about it, and I haven't
heard papa say anything, either."

"Does he go to New York every day?"

"Yes, of course," said Evelyn. The little girl had kept looking at
her sister with loving, adoring eyes. Now she suddenly cuddled up
close to her and thrust her arm through Maria's. "Oh, sister!" she
said, half sobbingly again.

"There, don't cry, sister's own precious," Maria said, kissing the
little, glowing face on her shoulder. She realized all at once how
hard the separation had been from her sister. "Are you glad to have
me home?" she asked.

For answer Evelyn only clung the closer. There was a strange passion
in the look of her big eyes as she glanced up at her sister. Maria
was too young herself to realize it, but the child had a dangerous
temperament. She had inherited none of her mother's hard
phlegmaticism. She was glowing and tingling with emotion and life and
feeling in every nerve and vein. As she clung to her sister she
trembled all over her lithe little body with the violence of her
affection for her and her delight at meeting her again. Evelyn had
made a sort of heroine of her older sister. Her imagination had
glorified her, and now the sight of her did not disappoint her in the
least. Evelyn thought Maria, in her brown travelling-gown and big,
brown-feathered hat, perfectly beautiful. She was proud of her with a
pride which reached ecstasy; she loved her with a love which reached
ecstasy.

"So father goes to New York every day?" said Maria again.

"Yes," said Evelyn. Then she repeated her ecstatic "Oh, sister!"

To Maria herself the affection of the little girl was inexpressibly
grateful. She said to herself that she had something, after all. She
thought of Lily Merrill, and reflected how much more she loved Evelyn
than she had loved George Ramsey, how much more precious a little,
innocent, beautiful girl was than a man. She felt somewhat reassured
about her father's health. It did not seem to her that he could be
very ill if he went to New York every day.

"Mamma has gone to the matinee," said Evelyn, nestling luxuriously,
like a kitten, against Maria. "She said she would bring me some
candy. Mamma wore her new blue velvet gown, and she looked lovely,
but"--Evelyn hesitated a second, then she whispered with her lips
close to Maria's ear--"I love you best."

"Evelyn, darling, you must not say such things," said Maria,
severely. "Of course, you love your own mother best."

"No, I don't," persisted Evelyn. "Maybe it's wicked, but I don't. I
love papa as well as I do you, but I don't love mamma so well. Mamma
gets me pretty things to wear, and she smiles at me, but I don't love
her so much. I can't help it."

"That is a naughty little girl," said Maria.

"I can't help it," said Evelyn. "Mamma can't love anybody as hard as
I can. I can love anybody so hard it makes me shake all over, and I
feel ill, but mamma can't. I love you so, Maria, that I don't feel
well."

"Nonsense!" said Maria, but she kissed Evelyn again.

"I don't--honest," said Evelyn. Then she added, after a second's
pause, "If I tell you something, won't you tell mamma--honest?"

"I can't promise if I don't know what it is," said Maria, with her
school-teacher manner.

"It isn't any harm, but mamma wouldn't understand. She never felt so,
and she wouldn't understand. You won't tell her, will you, sister?"

"No, I guess not," said Maria.

"Promise."

"Well, I won't tell her."

Evelyn looked up in her sister's face with her wonderful dark eyes, a
rose flush spread over her face. "Well, I am in love," she whispered.

Maria laughed, although she tried not to. "Well, with whom, dear?"
she asked.

"With a boy. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"

"No, I don't think it is very wrong," replied Maria, trying to
restrain her smile.

"His first name is pretty, but his last isn't so very," Evelyn said,
regretfully. "His first name is Ernest. Don't you think that is a
pretty name?"

"Very pretty."

"But his last name is only Jenks," said Evelyn, with a mortified air.
"That is horrid, isn't it?"

"Nobody can help his name," said Maria, consolingly.

"Of course he can't. Poor Ernest isn't to blame because his mother
married a man named Jenks; but I wish she hadn't. If we ever get
married, I don't want to be called Mrs. Jenks. Don't people ever
change their names, sister?"

"Sometimes, I believe."

"Well, I shall not marry him unless he changes his name. But he is
such a pretty boy. He looks across the school-room at me, and once,
when I met him in the vestibule, and there was nobody else there, he
asked me to kiss him, and I did."

"I don't think you ought to kiss boys," said Maria.

"I would rather kiss him than another girl," said Evelyn, looking up
at her sister with the most limpid passion, that of a child who has
not the faintest conception of what passion means.

"Well, sister would rather you did not," said Maria.

"I won't if you don't want me to," said Evelyn, meekly. "That was
quite a long time ago. It is not very likely I shall meet him
anywhere where we could kiss each other, anyway. Of course, I don't
really love him as much as I do you and papa. I would rather he died
than you or papa; but I am in love with him--you know what I mean,
sister?"

"I wouldn't think any more about it, dear," said Maria.

"I like to think about him," said Evelyn, simply. "I like to sit
whole hours and think about him, and make sort of stories about us,
you know--how me meet somewhere, and he tells me how much he loves
me, and how we kiss each other again. It makes me happy. I go to
sleep so. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"

Maria remembered her own childhood. "Perhaps it isn't wrong, exactly,
dear," she said, "but I wouldn't, if I were you. I think it is better
not."

"Well, I will try not to," said Evelyn, with a sigh. "He told Amy
Jones I was the prettiest girl in school. Of course we couldn't be
married for a long time, and I wouldn't be Mrs. Jenks. But, now
you've come home, maybe I sha'n't want to think so much about him."

Maria found new maids when she reached home. Ida did not keep her
domestics very long. However, nobody could say that was her fault in
this age when man-servants and maid-servants buzz angrily, like bees,
over household tasks and are constantly hungering for new fields.

"We have had two cooks and two new second-girls since you went away,"
Evelyn said, when they stood waiting for the front door to be opened,
and the man with Maria's trunk stood behind them. "The last
second-girl we had stole"--Evelyn said the last in a horrified
whisper--"and the last cook couldn't cook. The cook we have now is
named Agnes, and the second-girl is Irene. Agnes lets me go out in
the kitchen and make candy, and she always makes a little cake for
me; but I don't like Irene. She says things under her breath when she
thinks nobody will hear, and she makes up my bed so it is all
wrinkly. I shouldn't be surprised if she stole, too."

Then the door opened and a white-capped maid, with a rather pretty
face, evidently of the same class as Gladys Mann, appeared.

"This is my sister, Miss Maria, Irene," said Evelyn.

The maid nodded and said something inarticulate.

Maria said "How do you do?" to her, and asked her to tell the man
where to carry the trunk.

When the trunk was in Maria's old room, and Maria had smoothed her
hair and washed her face and hands, she and Evelyn sat down in the
parlor and waited. The parlor looked to Maria, after poor Aunt
Maria's sparse old furnishings, more luxurious than she had
remembered it. In fact, it had been improved. There were some
splendid palms in the bay-window, and some new articles of furniture.
The windows, also, had been enlarged, and were hung with new curtains
of filmy lace, with thin, red silk over them. The whole room seemed
full of rosy light.

"I wish you would ask Irene to fix the hearth fire," Evelyn had said
to Maria when they entered the room, which did seem somewhat chilly.

Maria asked the girl to do so, and when she had gone and the fire was
blazing Evelyn said:

"I didn't like to ask her, sister. She doesn't realize that I am not
a baby, and she does not like it. So I never ask her to do anything
except when mamma is here. Irene is afraid of mamma."

Maria laughed and looked at the clock. "How long will it be before
father comes, do you think, dear?" she asked.

"Papa comes home lately at five o'clock. I guess he will be here very
soon now; but mamma won't be home before half-past seven. She has
gone with the Voorhees to the matinee. Do you know the Voorhees,
sister?"

"No, dear."

"I guess they came to Edgham after you went away. They bought that
big house on the hill near the church. They are very rich. There are
Mr. Voorhees and Mrs. Voorhees and their little boy. He doesn't wear
long stockings in the coldest weather; his legs are quite bare from a
little above his shoes to his knees. I should think he would be cold,
but mamma says it is very stylish. He is a pretty little boy, but I
don't like him; he looks too much like Mr. Voorhees, and I don't like
him. He always acts as if he were laughing at something inside, and
you don't know what it is. Mrs. Voorhees is very handsome, not quite
so handsome as mamma, but very handsome, and she wears beautiful
clothes and jewels. They often ask mamma to go to the theatre with
them, and they are here quite a good deal. They have dinner-parties
and receptions, and mamma goes. We had a dinner-party here last week."

"Doesn't father go to the theatre with them?" asked Maria.

"No, he never goes. I don't know whether they ask him or not. If they
do, he doesn't go. I guess he would rather stay at home. Then I don't
believe papa would want to leave me alone until the late train, for
often the cook and Irene go out in the evening."

Maria looked anxiously at her little sister, who was sitting as close
to her as she could get in the divan before the fire. "Does papa look
well?" she asked.

"Why, yes, I guess so. He looks just the way he always has. I haven't
heard him say he wasn't well, nor mamma, and he hasn't had the
doctor, and I haven't seen him take any medicine. I guess he's well."

Maria looked at the clock, a fine French affair, which had been one
of Ida's wedding gifts, standing swinging its pendulum on the shelf
between a Tiffany vase and a bronze. "Father must be home soon now,
if he comes on that five-clock train," she said.

"Yes, I guess he will."

In fact, it was a very few minutes before a carriage stopped in front
of the house and Evelyn called out: "There he is! Papa has come!"

Maria did not dare look out of the window. She arose with trembling
knees and went out into the hall as the front door opened. She saw at
the first glance that her father had changed--that he did not look
well. And yet it was difficult to say why he did not look well. He
had not lost flesh, at least not perceptibly; he was not very pale,
but on his face was the expression of one who is looking his last at
the things of this world. The expression was at once stern and sad
and patient. When he saw Maria, however, the look disappeared for the
time. His face, which had not yet lost its boyish outlines, fairly
quivered between smiles and tears. He caught Maria in his arms.

"Father's blessed child!" he whispered in her ear.

"Oh, father," half sobbed Maria, "why didn't you send for me before?
Why didn't you tell me?"

"Hush, darling!" Harry said, with a glance at Evelyn, who stood
looking on with a puzzled, troubled expression on her little face.
Harry took off his overcoat, and they all went into the parlor. "That
fire looks good," said Harry, drawing close to it.

"I got Maria to ask Irene to make it," Evelyn said, in her childish
voice.

"That was a good little girl," said Harry. He sat down on the divan,
with a daughter on each side of him. Maria nestled close to her
father. With an effort she kept her quivering face straight. She
dared not look in his face again. A knell seemed ringing in her ears
from her own conviction, a voice of her inner consciousness, which
kept reiterating, "Father is going to die, father is going to die."
Maria knew little of illness, but she felt that she could not mistake
that expression. But her father talked quite gayly, asking her about
her school and Aunt Maria and Uncle Henry and his wife. Maria replied
mechanically. Finally she mustered courage to say:

"How are you feeling, father? Are you well?"

"I am about the same as when you went away, dear," Harry replied, and
that expression of stern, almost ineffable patience deepened on his
face. He smiled directly, however, and asked Evelyn what train her
mother had taken.

"She won't be home until the seven-thirty train," said Harry, "and
there is no use in our waiting dinner. You must be hungry, Maria.
Evelyn, darling, speak to Irene. I hear her in the dining-room."

Evelyn obeyed, and Harry gave his orders that dinner should be served
as soon as possible. The girl smiled at him with a coquettish air.

"Irene is pleasanter to papa than to anybody else," Evelyn observed,
meditatively, when Irene had gone out. "I guess girls are apt to be
pleasanter to gentlemen than to little girls."

Harry laughed and kissed the child's high forehead. "Little girls are
just as well off if they don't study out other people's peculiarities
too much," he said.

"They are very interesting," said Evelyn, with an odd look at him,
yet an entirely innocent look.

Maria was secretly glad that this first evening She was not there,
that she could dine alone with her father and Evelyn. It was a drop
of comfort, and yet the awful knell never ceased ringing in her
ears--"Father is going to die, father is going to die." Maria made an
effort to eat, because her father watched her anxiously.

"You are not as stout as you were when you went away, precious," he
said.

"I am perfectly well," said Maria.

"Well, I must say you do look well," said Harry, looking admiringly
at her. He admired his little Evelyn, but no other face in the world
upon which he was soon to close his eyes forever was quite so
beautiful to him as Maria's. "You look very much as your own mother
used to do," he said.

"Was Maria's mamma prettier than my mamma?" asked Evelyn, calmly,
without the least jealousy. She looked scrutinizingly at Maria, then
at her father. "I think Maria is a good deal prettier than mamma, and
I suppose, of course, her mamma must have been better-looking than
mine," said she, answering her own question, to Harry's relief. But
she straightway followed one embarrassing question with another. "Did
you love Maria's mamma better than you do my mamma?" she asked.

Maria came to her father's relief. "That is not a question for little
girls to ask, dear," said she.

"I don't see why," said Evelyn. "Little girls ought to know things. I
supposed that was why I was a little girl, in order to learn to know
everything. I should have been born grown up if it hadn't been for
that."

"But you must not ask such questions, precious," said Maria. "When
you are grown up you will see why."

Harry insisted upon Evelyn's going to bed directly after dinner,
although she pleaded hard to be allowed to sit up until her mother
returned. Harry wished for at least a few moments alone with Maria.
So Evelyn went off up-stairs, after teary kisses and good-nights, and
Maria was left alone with her father in the parlor.

"You are not well, father?" Maria said, immediately after Evelyn had
closed the door.

"No, dear," replied Harry, simply.

Maria retained her self-composure very much as her mother might have
done. A quick sense of the necessity of aiding her father, of
supporting him spiritually, came over her.

"What doctor have you seen, father?" she asked.

"The doctor here and three specialists in New York."

"And they all agreed?"

"Yes, dear."

Maria looked interrogatively at her father. Her face was very white
and shocked, but it did not quiver. Harry answered the look.

"I may have to give up almost any day now," he said, with an odd
sigh, half of misery, half of relief.

"Does Ida know?" asked Maria.

"No, dear, she does not suspect. I thought there was no need of
distressing her. I wanted to tell you while I was able, because--"
Harry hesitated, then he continued: "Father wanted to tell you how
sorry he was not to make any better provision for you," he said,
pitifully. "He didn't want you to think it was because he cared any
the less for you. But--soon after I married Ida--well, I realized how
helpless she would be, especially after Evelyn was born, and I had my
life insured for her benefit. A few years after I tried to get a
second policy for your benefit, but it was too late. Father hasn't
been well for quite a long time."

"I hope you don't think I care about any money," Maria cried, with
sudden passion. "I can take care of myself. It is _you_ I think of."
Maria began to weep, then restrained herself, but she looked
accusingly and distressedly at her father.

"I had to settle the house on her, too," said Harry, painfully. "But
I felt sure at the time--she said so--that you would always have your
home here."

"That is all right, father," said Maria.

"All father can do for his first little girl, the one he loves best
of all," said Harry, "is to leave her a little sum he has saved and
put in the savings-bank here in her name. It is not much, dear."

"It is more than I want. I don't want anything. All I want is you!"
cried Maria. She had an impulse to rush to her father, to cling about
his neck and weep her very heart out, but she restrained herself. She
saw how unutterably weary her father looked, and she realized that
any violent emotion, even of love, might be too much for his
strength. She knew, too, that her father understood her, that she
cared none the less because she restrained herself. Maria would never
know, luckily for her, how painfully and secretly poor Harry had
saved the little sum which he had placed in the bank to her credit;
how he had gone without luncheons, without clothes, without medicines
even how he had possibly hastened the end by his anxiety for her
welfare.

Suddenly carriage-wheels were heard, and Harry straightened himself.
"That is Ida," he said. Then he rose and opened the front door,
letting a gust of frosty outside air enter the house, and presently
Ida came in. She was radiant, the most brilliant color on her hard,
dimpled cheeks. The blank dark light of her eyes, and her set smile,
were just as Maria remembered them. She was magnificent in her blue
velvet, with her sable furs and large, blue velvet hat, with a blue
feather floating over the black waves of her hair. Maria said to
herself that she was certainly a beauty, that she was more beautiful
than ever. She greeted Maria with the most faultless manner; she gave
her her cool red cheek to be kissed, and made the suitable inquiries
as to her journey, her health, and the health of her relatives in
Amity. When Harry said something about dinner, she replied that she
had dined with the Voorhees in the Pennsylvania station, since they
had missed the train and had some time on their hands. She removed
her wraps and seated herself before the fire.

When at last Maria went to her own room, she was both pleased and
disturbed to find Evelyn in her bed. She had wished to be free to
give way to her terrible grief. Evelyn, however, waked just enough to
explain that she wanted to sleep with her, and threw one slender arm
over her, and then sank again into the sound sleep of childhood.
Maria lay sobbing quietly, and her sister did not awaken at all. It
might have been midnight when the door of the room was softly opened
and light flared across the ceiling. Maria turned, and Ida stood in
the doorway. She had on a red wrapper, and she held a streaming
candle. Her black hair floated around her beautiful face, which had
not lost its color or its smile, although what she said might
reasonably have caused it to do so.

"Your father does not seem quite well," she said to Maria. "I have
sent Irene and the cook for the doctor. If you don't mind, I wish you
would get up and slip on a wrapper and come into my room." Ida spoke
softly for fear of waking Evelyn, whom she had directly seen in
Maria's bed when she opened the door.

Maria sprang up, got a wrapper, put it on over her night-gown, thrust
her feet into slippers, and followed Ida across the hall. Harry lay
on the bed, seemingly unconscious.

"I can't seem to rouse him," said Ida. She spoke quite placidly.

Maria went close to her father and put her ear to his mouth. "He is
breathing," she whispered, tremulously.

Ida smiled. "Oh yes," she said. "I don't think it anything serious.
It may be indigestion."

Then Maria turned on her. "Indigestion!" she whispered. "Indigestion!
He is dying. He has been dying a long time, and you haven't had sense
enough to see it. You haven't loved him enough to see it. What made
you marry my father if you didn't love him?"

Ida looked at Maria, and her face seemed to freeze into a smiling
mask.

"He is dying!" Maria repeated, in a frenzy, yet still in a whisper.

"Dying? What do you know about it?" Ida asked, with icy emphasis.

"I know. He has seen three specialists besides the doctor here."

"And he told you instead of me?"

"He told me because he knew I loved him," said Maria. She was as
white as death herself, and she trembled from head to foot with
strange, stiff tremors. Her blue eyes fairly blazed at her
step-mother.

Suddenly the sick man began to breathe stertorously. Even Ida started
at that. She glanced nervously towards the bed. Little Evelyn, in her
night-gown, her black fleece of hair fluffing around her face like a
nimbus of shadow, came and stood in the doorway.

"What is the matter with papa?" she whispered, piteously.

"He is asleep, that is all, and breathing hard," replied her mother.
"Go back to bed."

"Go back to bed, darling," said Maria.

"What is the matter?" asked Evelyn. She burst into a low, frightened
wail.

"Go back to bed this instant, Evelyn," said her mother, and the child
fled, whimpering.

Maria stood close to her father. Ida seated herself in a chair beside
the table on which the lamp stood. Neither of them spoke again. The
dying man continued to breathe his deep, rattling breath, the breath
of one who is near the goal of life and pants at the finish of the
race. The cook, a large Irishwoman, put her face inside the door.

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