University of Virginia Library

8. VIII.

May 20.

The nearer the time has come for Aunt
Winifred to go, the more it has seemed impossible
to part with her. I have run away from
the thought like a craven, till she made me
face it this morning, by saying decidedly that
she should go on the first of the week.

I dropped my sewing; the work-basket
tipped over, and all my spools rolled away
under the chairs. I had a little time to think
while I was picking them up.

“There is the rest of my visit at Norwich to
be made, you know,” she said, “and while I
am there I shall form some definite plans for
the summer; I have hardly decided what, yet.
I had better leave here by the seven o'clock
train, if such an early start will not incommode
you.”

I wound up the last spool, and turned away
to the window. There was a confused, dreary
sky of scurrying clouds, and a cold wind was

bruising the apple-buds. I hate a cold wind
in May. It made me choke a little, thinking
how I should sit and listen to it after she was
gone, — of the old, blank, comfortless days that
must come and go, — of what she had brought,
and what she would take away. I was a bit
faint, I think, for a minute. I had not really
thought the prospect through, before.

“Mary,” she said, “what 's the matter?
Come here.”

I went over, and she drew me into her lap,
and I put my arms about her neck.

“I can not bear it,” said I, “and that is the
matter.”

She smiled, but her smile faded when she
looked at me.

And then I told her, sobbing, how it was;
that I could not go into my future alone, — I
could not do it! that she did not know how
weak I was, — and reckless, — and wicked; that
she did not know what she had been to me.
I begged her not to leave me. I begged her
to stay and help me bear my life.

“My dear! you are as bad as Faith when I
put her to bed alone.”

“But,” I said, “when Faith cries, you go to
her, you know.”

“Are you quite in earnest, Mary?” she
asked, after a pause. “You don't know very
much about me, after all, and there is the
child. It is always an experiment, bringing
two families into lifelong relations under one
roof. If I could think it best, you might repent
your bargain.”

“I am not `a family,'” I said, feebly trying
to laugh. “Aunt Winifred, if you and Faith
only will make this your home, I can never
thank you, never. I shall be entertaining my
good angels, and that is the whole of it.”

“I have had some thought of not going back,”
she said at last, in a low, constrained voice, as
if she were touching something that gave her
great pain, “for Faith's sake. I should like to
educate her in New England, if — I had intended
if we stayed to rent or buy a little
home of our own somewhere, but I had been
putting off a decision. We are most weak
and most selfish sometimes when we think
ourselves strongest and noblest, Mary. I love
my husband's people. I think they love me.
I was almost happy with them. It seemed as
if I were carrying on his work for him. That
was so pleasant!”

She put me down out of her arms and walked
across the room.

“I will think the matter over,” she said, by
and by, in her natural tones, “and let you know
to-night.”

She went away up stairs then, and I did not
see her again until to-night. I sent Faith up
with her dinner and tea, judging that she
would rather see the child than me. I observed,
when the dishes came down, that she
had touched nothing but a cup of coffee.

I began to understand, as I sat alone in the
parlor through the afternoon, how much I had
asked of her. In my selfish distress at losing
her, I had not thought of that. Faces that
her husband loved, meadows and hills and sunsets
that he has watched, the home where his
last step sounded and his last word was spoken,
the grave where she has laid him, — this last
more than all, — call after her, and cling to
her with yearning closeness. To leave them,
is to leave the last faint shadow of her beautiful
past. It hurts, but she is too brave to cry out.

Tea was over, and Faith in bed, but still she
did not come down. I was sitting by the window,
watching a little crescent moon climb over
the hills, and wondering whether I had better
go up, when she came in and stood behind me,
and said, attempting to laugh: —

“Very impolite in me to run off so, was n't
it? Cowardly, too, I think. Well, Mary?”

“Well, Auntie?”

“Have you not repented your proposition
yet?”

“You would excel as an inquisitor, Mrs.
Forceythe!”

“Then it shall be as you say; as long as
you want us you shall have us, — Faith and
me.”

I turned to thank her, but could not when
I saw her face. It was very pale; there was
something inexpressibly sad about her mouth,
and her eyelids drooped heavily, like one weary
from a great struggle.

Feeling for the moment guilty and ashamed
before her, as if I had done her wrong, “It is
going to be very hard for you,” I said.

“Never mind about that,” she answered,
quickly. “We will not talk about that. I
knew, though I did not wish to know, that it
was best for Faith. Your hands about my
neck have settled it. Where the work is, there
the laborer must be. It is quite plain now.
I have been talking it over with them all the
afternoon; it seems to be what they want.”

“With them”? I started at the words; who

had been in her lonely chamber? Ah, it is
simply real to her. Who, indeed, but her
Saviour and her husband?

She did not seem inclined to talk, and stole
away from me presently, and out of doors; she
was wrapped in her blanket shawl, and had
thrown a shimmering white hood over her gray
hair. I wondered where she could be going,
and sat still at the window watching her. She
opened and shut the gate softly; and, turning
her face towards the churchyard, walked up
the street and out of my sight.

She feels nearer to him in the resting-place
of the dead. Her heart cries after the grave
by which she will never sit and weep again;
on which she will never plant the roses any
more.

As I sat watching and thinking this, the
faint light struck her slight figure and little
shimmering hood again, and she walked down
the street and in with steady step.

When she came up and stood beside me,
smiling, with the light knitted thing thrown
back on her shoulders, her face seemed to rise
from it as from a snowy cloud; and for her
look, — I wish Raphael could have had it for
one of his rapt Madonnas.

“Now, Mary,” she said, with the sparkle
back again in her voice, “I am ready to be
entertaining, and promise not to play the
hermit again very soon. Shall I sit here on
the sofa with you? Yes, my dear, I am happy,
quite happy.”

So then we took this new promise of home
that has come to make my life, if not joyful,
something less than desolate, and analyzed it
in its practical bearings. What a pity that all
pretty dreams have to be analyzed! I had
some notion about throwing our little incomes
into a joint family fund, but she put a veto to
that; I suppose because mine is the larger.
She prefers to take board for herself and Faith;
but, if I know myself, she shall never be suffered
to have the feeling of a boarder, and I
will make her so much at home in my house
that she shall not remember that it is not her
own.

Her visit to Norwich she has decided to put
off until the autumn, so that I shall have her
to myself undisturbed all summer.

I have been looking at Roy's picture a long
time, and wondering how he would like the
new plan. I said something of the sort to her.

“Why put any `would' in that sentence?”

she said, smiling. “It belongs in the present
tense.”

“Then I am sure he likes it,” I answered,
— “he likes it,” and I said the words over till
I was ready to cry for rest in their sweet
sound.

22d.

It is Roy's birthday. But I have not spoken
of it. We used to make a great deal of these
little festivals, — but it is of no use to write
about that.

I am afraid I have been bearing it very badly
all day. She noticed my face, but said nothing
till to-night. Mrs. Bland was down stairs, and
I had come away alone up here in the dark.
I heard her asking for me, but would not go
down. By and by Aunt Winifred knocked,
and I let her in.

“Mrs. Bland cannot understand why you
don't see her, Mary,” she said, gently. “You
know you have not thanked her for those
English violets that she sent the other day.
I only thought I would remind you; she might
feel a little pained.”

“I can't to-night, — not to-night, Aunt Winifred.
You must excuse me to her somehow.
I don't want to go down.”

“Is it that you don't `want to,' or is it that
you can't?” she said, in that gentle, motherly
way of hers, at which I can never take offence.
“Mary, I wonder if Roy would not a little
rather that you would go down?”

It might have been Roy himself who spoke.

I went down.