University of Virginia Library

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.
RECONCILIATION.

THERE had been a succession of rainy days in
Davenport,—dark, rainy days, which added to
the gloom hanging over that house whose inmates
watched so intently by Ethie's side, trembling lest
the life they prayed for so earnestly might go out at
any moment, so high the fever ran, and so wild and
restless the patient grew. The friends were all there
now,—James, and John, and Andy, and Aunt Barbara,
with Mrs. Markham, senior, who, next to Richard and
Andy, seemed more anxious, more interested than any one
for the sick girl who lay insensible of all that was passing
around her, save at brief intervals when she seemed
for an instant to realize where she was, for her eyes
would flash about the room with a frightened look, and
then seek Richard's face with a pleading expression, as
if asking him not to cast her off, not to send her back
into the dreary world where she had wandered so long
alone. The sight of so many seemed to worry her,
and, at the doctor's suggestion, all were at last banished
from the sick-room except Aunt Barbara, and Richard,
and Nick Bottom, as Ethelyn persisted in calling poor
Andy, who was terribly perplexed to know whether he
was complimented or not, and who eventually took to
studying Shakspeare to find who Bottom was. Those
were trying days to Richard, who rarely left Ethelyn's
bedside, except when it was absolutely necessary. She

was more quiet with him, and would sometimes sleep for
hours upon his arm, with one hand clasped in Aunt
Barbara's, and the other held by Andy. At other times,
when the fever was on, no arm availed to hold her as she
tossed from side to side, talking of things at which a stranger
would have marvelled, and which made Richard's
heart ache to its very core. Sometimes she was a girl
in Chicopee, and all the past as connected with Frank
Van Buren was lived over again; then she would talk
of Richard, and shudder as she recalled the dreary, dreadful
day when the honeysuckles were in blossom, and he
came to make her his wife.

“It was wrong, all wrong. I did not love him then,”
she said, “nor afterward, on the prairie, nor anywhere, until
I went away and found what it was to live without
him.”

“And do you love him now?” Richard asked her once
when he sat alone with her.

There was no hesitancy on her part, no waiting to make
up an answer. It was ready on her lips, “Yes, oh, yes!”
and the weak arms lifted themselves up and were wound
around his neck with a pressure almost stifling. How much
of this was real Richard could not tell, but he accepted it
all as such, and waited impatiently for the day when the
full light of reason should return and Ethie be restored to
him. There was but little of her past life which he did not
learn from her ravings, and so there was less for her to tell
him when at last the fever abated, and her eyes met his
with a knowing, rational expression. Andy was alone with
her when the change first came. The rain was over, and
out upon the river the sunlight was softly falling. At
Andy's earnest entreaty, Richard had gone for a little exercise

in the open air, and was walking slowly up and down
the piazza, while Aunt Barbara slept, and Andy kept his
vigils by Ethelyn. She, too, was sleeping quietly, and
Andy saw the great drops of perspiration upon her brow
and beneath her hair. He knew it was a good omen, and
on his knees by the bedside, with his face in his hands, he
prayed aloud, thanking God for restoring Ethelyn to them,
and asking that they might all be taught just how to make
her happy. A sound between a moan and a sob roused
him, and looking up, he saw the great tears rolling down
Ethie's cheeks, while her lips moved as if they would speak
to him.

“Andy, dear old Andy! is it you, and are you glad to
have me back?” she said, and then all Andy's pent-up
feelings found vent in a storm of tears and passionate protestations
of love and tenderness for his darling sister.

She remembered how she came there, and seemed to understand
why Andy was there, too; but the rest was a
little confused. Was Aunt Barbara there, or had she
dreamed it?

“Aunt Barbara is here,” Andy said, and then, with the
same frightened look her face had so often worn during her
illness, Ethie said, “Somebody else has sat by me, and
held my head and hands, and kissed me! Andy, tell me,—
was that Richard?—and did he kiss me, and is he glad to
find me?”

She was gazing fixedly at Andy, who replied, “Yes, Dick
is here. He's glad to have you back. He's kissed you
more than forty times. He don't remember nothing.”

“And the divorce, Andy,—is the story true, and am I
not his wife?”

“I never heard of no divorce, only what you said about

one in your tantrums. Dick would as soon have cut off his
head as got such a thing,” Andy replied.

Ethelyn knew she could rely on what Andy said, and a
heartfelt “Thank God! It is more than I deserve!” fell
from her lips, just as a step was heard in the hall.

“That's Dick,—he's coming,” Andy whispered, and
hastily withdrawing he left the two alone together.

It was more than an hour before even Aunt Barbara ventured
into the room, and when she did she knew by the joy
written on Richard's face and the deep peace shining in
Ethie's eyes that the reconciliation had been complete and
perfect. Every error had been confessed, every fault forgiven,
and the husband and wife stood ready now to begin
the world anew, with perfect love for and confidence in each
other. Ethie had acknowledged all her faults, the greatest
of which was the giving her hand to one from whom she
withheld her heart.

“But you have that now,” she said. “I can truly say
that I love you far better than ever Frank Van Buren was
loved, and I know you to be worthy, too. I have been so
wicked, Richard,—so wilful and impatient,—that I wonder
you have not learned to hate my very name. I may be
wilful still. My old hot temper is not all subdued, though
I hope I am a better woman than I used to be when I cared
for nothing but myself. God has been so good to me who
have forgotten Him so long; but we will serve Him together
now.”

As Ethie talked she had nestled closer and closer to her
husband, whose arms encircled her form and whose face
bent itself down to hers, while a rain of tears fell upon her
hair and forehead as the strong man,—the grave Judge and
the honored Governor,—confessed where he, too, had been

in fault, and craving his young wife's pardon, ascribed also
to God the praise for bringing them both to feel their dependence
on Him, as well as to see this day, the happiest
of their lives.

Gradually, as she could bear it, the family came in one
by one to see her, Mrs. Markham, Sen., waiting till the
very last, and refusing to go until Ethelyn had expressed a
wish to see her.

“I was pretty hard on her, I s'pose, and it would not be
strange if she laid it up against me,” she said to Melinda;
but Ethie had nothing against her now.

The deep waters through which she had passed had obliterated
all traces of bitterness toward any one, and when
her mother-in-law came in she extended her hand and
whispered, “I'm too tired, mother, to talk much, but kiss
me once for the sake of what we are going to be to each
other.”

Mrs. Markham was not a bad or a hard woman, either.
She was only unfortunate that her ideas had run in one rut
so long without any jolt to throw them out. Circumstances
had greatly softened her, and Ethie's words touched her
deeply.

“I was mighty mean to you sometimes, Ethelyn, and
I've been sorry for it,” she said, as she stooped to kiss her
daughter-in-law, and then hurried from the room. “Only
to think, she called me mother,” she said to Melinda, to
whom she reported the particulars of her interview with
Ethelyn,—“me, who had been meaner than dirt to her,—
called me mother, when I used to mistrust she didn't think
any more of me than if I'd been an old squaw. I shan't
forget it right away.”

Perhaps the sweetest, most joyful tears Ethelyn shed

that day were those which came to her eyes when they
brought to her Ethelyn, her namesake, the little three-year-old,
who pushed her brown curls back from her baby face
with such a womanly air, and said—

“I'se glad to see Aunt Ethie. I prays for her ever' night.
Uncle Andy told me so. I loves you, Aunt Ethie.”

She was a beautiful little creature, and her innocent
prattle and engaging manners did much toward bringing
the color back to Ethie's cheeks, and the brightness to her
eyes. Those days of convalescence were blissful ones, for
now there was no shadow of a cloud resting on the domestic
horizon. Between husband and wife there was perfect
love; and in his newly-born happiness Richard forgot the
ailments which had sent him an invalid to Clifton; while
Ethie, surrounded by every luxury which love could devise
or money procure, and made each hour to feel how dear
she was to those from whom she had been so long estranged,
grew fresh, and young, and pretty again; so that when,
early in December, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren came to Davenport
to see her niece, she found her more beautiful than she had
been in her early girlhood, when the boyish Frank had
paid his court to her. Poor little Nettie was dead. Her
life had literally been worried out of her; and during
those September days, when Ethelyn was watched and
tended so carefully, she had turned herself wearily upon
her pillow, and just as the clock was striking the hour of
midnight, asked of the attendant—

“Has Frank come yet?”

“Not yet. Do you want anything?”

“No, nothing. Is mother here?”

“She was tired out, and has gone to her room to rest.
Shall I call her?”

“No, no matter. Is Ethie in her crib? Please bring her
here. Never mind if you do wake her. 'Tis the last time.”

And so the little sleeping child was brought to the dying
mother, who would fain fell that something she had loved
was near her in the last hour of loneliness and anguish
she would ever know. Sorrow, disappointment, and cruel
neglect had been her lot ever since she became a wife, but
at the last these had purified and made her better, and led
her to the Saviour's feet, where she laid the little child she
held so closely to her bosom, dropping her tears upon its
face and pressing her farewell kiss upon its lips. Then she
put it from her, and bidding the servant remove the light,
which made her eyes ache so, turned again to her pillow,
and folding her little, white, wasted hands upon her bosom,
said softly the prayer the Saviour taught, and then glided
as softly down the river whose tide is never backward
toward the shores of time.

About one o'clock Frank came home, his head full of
champagne and brandy, and every good feeling blunted
with dissipation. But the Nettie whose pale face had been
to him so constant a reproach, was gone forever, and only
the lifeless form was left of what he once called his wife.
She was buried in Mount Auburn, and they made her a
grander funeral than they had given to her first-born, and
then the household went on the same as ever until Mrs. Van
Buren conceived the idea of visiting her niece, Mrs. Gov.
Markham, and taking her grandchild with her. For the
sake of the name she was sure the little girl would be welcome,
as well as for the sake of the dead mother. And she
was welcome, more so even than the stately aunt, whose
deep mourning robes seemed to throw a kind of shadowy
gloom over the house which she found so handsome, and

elegant, and perfectly kept that she would willingly have
spent the entire winter there. She was not invited to do
that, and in January she went back to her home, but not
until she had eaten a Christmas dinner with Mrs. Markham,
senior, at whose house the whole family assembled on that
occasion.

There was much good cheer and merriment there, and
Ethie, in the rich crimson silk which Richard had surprised
her with, was the queen of all, her wishes deferred
to, and her tastes consulted with a delicacy and deference
which no one could fail to observe. And Eunice Plympton
was there, too, waiting upon the table with Andy,
who insisted upon standing at the back of Ethie's chair,
just as he had seen the waiters do in Camden, and would
have his mother ring the bell when anything was wanted.
It was a happy family reunion, and a meet harbinger of
the peaceful days in store for our heroine,—days which
came and went so fast, until winter melted into spring, and
the spring budded into summer, and the summer faded
into the golden autumn, and the autumn floated with
feathery snow-flakes into the chilly winter and December
came again, bringing another meeting of the Markhams.
But this time it was at the Governor's house in Davenport,
and another was added to the number,—a pretty little
waxen thing, which all through the elaborate dinner slept
quietly in its crib, and then in the evening, when the gas
was lighted in the parlors, behaved most admirably, and
lay very still in Richard's arms until it was transferred
from his to those of the clergyman, who in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost baptized it “Daisy
Grant.”