Maria fell asleep that night with the full assurance that she had not
been mistaken concerning the beauty of the little face which she had
seen in the looking-glass. All that troubled her was the
consideration that her aunt Maria, whose homely face seemed to glare
out of the darkness at her, might have looked just as she did when
she was her age. She hoped, and then she hoped that the hope was not
wicked, that she might die young rather than live to look like her
aunt Maria. She pictured with a sort of pleasurable horror, what a
lovely little waxen-image she would look now, laid away in a nest of
white flowers. She had only just begun to doze, when she awoke with a
great start. Her father had opened her door, and stood calling her.
"Maria," he said, in an agitated voice.
Maria sat up in bed. "Oh, father, what is it?" said she, and a vague
horror chilled her.
"Get up, and slip on something, and go into your mother's room," said
her father, in a gasping sort of voice. "I've got to go for the
doctor."
Maria put one slim little foot out of bed. "Oh, father," she said,
"is mother sick?"
"Yes, she is very sick," replied her father. His voice sounded almost
savage. It was as if he were furious with his wife for being ill,
furious with Maria, with life, and death itself. In reality he was
torn almost to madness with anxiety. "Slip on something so you won't
catch cold," said he, in his irritated voice. "I don't want another
one down."
Maria ran to her closet and pulled out a little pink wrapper. "Oh,
father, is mother very sick?" she whispered again.
"Yes, she is very sick. I am going to have another doctor to-morrow,"
replied her father, still in that furious, excited voice, which the
sick woman must have heard.
"What shall I--" began Maria, but her father, running down the
stairs, cut her short.
"Do nothing," said he. "Just go in there and stay with her. And don't
you talk. Don't you speak a word to her. Go right in." With that the
front door slammed.
Maria went tiptoeing into her mother's room, still shaking from head
to foot, and her blue eyes seeming to protrude from her little white
face. Even before she entered her mother's room she became conscious
of a noise, something between a wail and a groan. It was
indescribably terrifying. It was like nothing which she had ever
heard before. It did not seem possible that her mother, that anything
human, in fact, was making such a noise, and yet no animal could have
made it, for it was articulate. Her mother was in fact both praying
and repeating verses of Scripture, in that awful voice which was no
longer capable of normal speech, but was compounded of wail and
groan. Every sentence seemed to begin with a groan, and ended with a
long-drawn-out wail. Maria went close to her mother's bed and stood
looking at her. Her poor little face would have torn her mother's
heart with its piteous terror, had she herself not been in such agony.
Maria did not speak. She remembered what her father had said. As her
mother lay there, stretched out stiff and stark, almost as if she
were dead, Maria glanced around the room as if for help. She caught
sight of a bottle of cologne on the dresser, one which she had given
her mother herself the Christmas before; she had bought it out of her
little savings of pocket-money. Maria went unsteadily over to the
dresser and got the cologne. She also opened a drawer and got out a
clean handkerchief. She became conscious that her mother's eyes were
upon her, even although she never ceased for a moment her cries of
agony.
"What--r you do--g?" asked her mother, in her dreadful voice.
"Just getting some cologne to put on your head, to make you feel
better, mother," replied Maria, piteously. She thought she must
answer her mother's question in spite of her father's prohibition.
Her mother seemed to take no further notice; she turned her face to
the wall. "Have--mercy upon me, O Lord, according to Thy loving
kindness, according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies," she
shrieked out. Then the words ended with a long-drawn-out "Oh--oh--"
Had Maria not been familiar with the words, she could not have
understood them. Not a consonant was fairly sounded, the vowels were
elided. She went, feeling as if her legs were sticks, close to her
mother's bed, and opened the cologne bottle with hands which shook
like an old man's with the palsy. She poured some cologne on the
handkerchief and a pungent odor filled the room. She laid the wet
handkerchief on her mother's sallow forehead, then she recoiled, for
her mother, at the shock of the coldness, experienced a new and
almost insufferable spasm of pain. "Let--me alone!" she wailed, and
it was like the howl of a dog.
Maria slunk back to the dresser with the handkerchief and the cologne
bottle, then she returned to her mother's bedside and seated herself
there in a rocking-chair. A lamp was burning over on the dresser, but
it was turned low; her mother's convulsed face seemed to waver in
unaccountable shadows. Maria sat, not speaking a word, but quivering
from head to foot, and her mother kept up her prayers and her verses
from Scripture. Maria herself began to pray in her heart. She said it
over and over to herself, in unutterable appeal and terror, "O Lord,
please make mother well, please make her well." She prayed on,
although the groaning wail never ceased.
Suddenly her mother turned and looked at her, and spoke quite
naturally. "Is that you?" she said.
"Yes, mother. I'm so sorry you are sick. Father has gone for the
doctor."
"You haven't got on enough," said her mother, still in her natural
voice.
"I've got on my wrapper."
"That isn't enough, getting up right out of bed so. Go and get my
white crocheted shawl out of the closet and put it over your
shoulders."
Maria obeyed. While she was doing so her mother resumed her cries.
She said the first half of the twenty-third psalm, then she looked
again at Maria seating herself beside her, and said, in her own
voice, wrested as it were by love from the very depths of mortal
agony. "Have you got your stockings on?" said she.
"Yes, ma'am, and my slippers."
Her mother said no more to her. She resumed her attention to her own
misery with an odd, small gesture of despair. The cries never ceased.
Maria still prayed. It seemed to her that her father would never
return with the doctor. It seemed to her, in spite of her prayer,
that all hope of relief lay in the doctor, and not in the Lord. It
seemed to her that the doctor must help her mother. At last she heard
wheels, and, in her joy, she spoke in spite of her father's
injunction. "There's the doctor now," said she. "I guess he's
bringing father home with him."
Again her mother's eyes opened with a look of intelligence, again she
spoke in her natural voice. She looked towards the clothes which she
had worn during the day, on a chair. "Put my clothes in the closet,"
said she, but her voice strained terribly on the last word.
Maria flew, and hung up her mother's clothes in the closet just
before her father and the doctor entered the room. As she did so, the
tears came for the first time. She had a ready imagination. She
thought to herself that her mother might never put on those clothes
again. She kissed the folds of her mother's dress passionately, and
emerged from the closet, the tears streaming down her face, all the
muscles of which were convulsed. The doctor, who was a young man,
with a handsome, rather hard face, glanced at her before even looking
at the moaning woman in the bed. He said something in a low tone to
her father, who immediately addressed her.
"Go right into your own room, and stay there until I tell you to come
out, Maria," said he, still in that angry voice, which seemed to have
no reason in it. It was the dumb anger of the race against Fate,
which included and overran individuals in its way, like Juggernaut.
At her father's voice, Maria gave a hysterical sob and fled. A sense
of injury tore her heart, as well as her anxiety. She flung herself
face downward on her bed and wept. After a while she turned over on
her back and looked at the room. Not one little thing in the whole
apartment but served to rack her very soul with the consideration of
her mother's love, which she was perhaps about to lose forever. The
dainty curtains at the windows, the scarf on the dresser, the chintz
cover on a chair--every one her mother had planned. She could not
remember how much her mother had scolded her, only how much she had
loved her. At the moment of death the memory of love reigns
triumphant over all else, but she still felt the dazed sense of
injury that her father should have spoken so to her. She could hear
the low murmur of voices in her mother's room across the hall.
Suddenly the cries and moans ceased. A great joy irradiated the
child. She said to herself that her mother was better, that the
doctor had given her something to help her.
She got off the bed, wrapped her little pink garment around her, and
stole across the hall to her mother's room. The whole hall was filled
with a strange, sweet smell which made her faint, but along with the
faintness came such an increase of joy that it was almost ecstasy.
She turned the knob of her mother's door, but, before she could open
it, it was opened from the other side, and her father's face, haggard
and resentful as she had never seen it, appeared.
"Go back!" he whispered, fiercely.
"Oh, father, is mother better?"
"Go back!"
Maria went back, and again the tempest of woe and injury swept over
her. Why should her father speak to her so? Why could he not tell her
if her mother were better? She sat in her little rocking-chair beside
the window, and looked out at the night. She was conscious of a
terrible sensation which seemed to have its starting-point at her
heart, but which pervaded her whole body, her whole consciousness.
She was conscious of such misery, such grief, that it was like a
weight and a pain. She knew now that her mother was no better, that
she might even die. She heard no more of the cries and moans, and
somehow now, the absence of them seemed harder to bear than they
themselves had been. Suddenly she heard her mother's door open. She
heard her father's voice, and the doctor's in response, but she still
could not distinguish a word. Presently she heard the front door open
and close softly. Then her father hurried down the steps, and got
into the doctor's buggy and drove away. It was dark, but she could
not mistake her father. She knew that he had gone for another doctor,
probably Dr. Williams, who lived in the next town, and was considered
very skilful. The other doctor was remaining with her mother. She did
not dare leave her room again. She sat there watching an hour, and a
pale radiance began to appear in the east, which her room faced. It
was like dawn in another world, everything had so changed to her. The
thought came to her that she might go down-stairs and make some
coffee, if she only knew how. Her father might like some when he
returned. But she did not know how, and even if she had she dared not
leave her room again.
The pale light in the east increased, suddenly rosy streamers, almost
like northern lights, were flung out across the sky. She could
distinguish things quite clearly. She heard the rattle of wheels, and
thought it was her father returning with Dr. Williams, but instead it
was the milkman in his yellow cart. He carried a bottle of milk
around to the south door. There was something horribly ghastly in
that every-day occurrence to the watching child. She realized the
interminable moving on of things in spite of all individual
sufferings, as she would have realized the revolution of a wheel of
torture. She felt that it was simply hideous that the milk should be
left at the door that morning, just as if everything was as it had
been. When the milkman jumped into his wagon, whistling, it seemed to
her as if he were doing an awful thing. The milk-wagon stopped at the
opposite house, then moved on out of sight down the street. She
wished to herself that the milkman's horse might run away while he
was at some door. The rancor which possessed her father, the kicking
against the pricks, was possessing her. She felt a futile rage, like
that of some little animal trodden underfoot. A boy whom she knew ran
past whooping, with a tin-pail, after the milkman. Evidently his
mother wanted some extra milk. The sun was reflected on the sides of
the swinging pail, and the flash of light seemed to hurt her, and she
felt the same unreasoning wrath against the boy. Why was not Willy
Royce's mother desperately sick, like her mother, instead of simply
sending for extra milk? The health and the daily swing of the world
in its arc of space seemed to her like a direct insult.
At last it occurred to her that she ought to dress herself. She left
the window, brushed her hair, braided it, and tied it with a blue
ribbon, and put on her little blue gingham gown which she commonly
wore mornings. Then she sat by the window again. It was not very long
after that that she saw the doctor coming, driving fast. Her father
was with him, and between them sat a woman. She recognized the woman
at once. She was a trained nurse who lived in Edgham. "They have got
Miss Bell," she thought; "mother must be awful sick." She knew that
Miss Bell's wages were twenty-five dollars a week, and that her
father would not have called her in except in an extreme case. She
watched her father help out the woman, who was stout and middle-aged,
and much larger than he. Miss Bell had a dress-suit case, which her
father tugged painfully into the house; Miss Bell followed him. She
heard his key turn in the lock while the doctor fastened his horse.
She saw the doctor, who was slightly lame, limp around to the buggy
after his horse was tied, and take out two cases. She hated him while
he did it. She felt intuitively that something terrible was to come
to her mother because of those cases. She watched the doctor limp up
the steps with positive malevolence. "If he is such a smart doctor,
why doesn't he cure himself?" she asked.
She heard steps on the stairs, then the murmur of voices, and the
sound of the door opening into her mother's room. A frightful sense
of isolation came over her. She realized that it was infinitely worse
to be left by herself outside, suffering, than outside happiness. She
tried again to pray, then she stopped. "It is no good praying," she
reflected, "God did not stop mother's pain. It was only stopped by
that stuff I smelled out in the entry." She could not reason back of
that; her terror and misery brought her up against a dead wall. It
seemed to her presently that she heard a faint cry from her mother's
room, then she was quite sure that she smelled that strange, sweet
smell even through her closed door. Then her father opened her door
abruptly, and a great whiff of it entered with him, like some ghost
of pain and death.
"The doctors have neither of them had any breakfast, and they can't
leave her," he said, with a jerk of his elbow, and speaking still
with that angry tone towards the unoffending child. "Can you make
coffee?"
"I don't know how."
"Good for nothing!" said her father, and shut the door with a subdued
bang.
Maria heard him going down-stairs, and presently she heard a rattle
in the kitchen, a part of which was under her room. She went out
herself and stole softly down the stairs. Her father, with an air of
angry helplessness, was emptying the coffee-pot into her mother's
nice sink. Maria stood trembling at his elbow. "I don't believe
that's where mother empties it," she ventured.
"It has got to be emptied somewhere," said her father, and his tone
sounded as if he swore. Maria shrank back. "They've got to have some
coffee, anyhow."
Maria's father carried the coffee-pot over to the stove, in which a
freshly kindled fire was burning, and set it on it, in the hottest
place. Maria stealthily moved it back while he was searching for the
coffee in the pantry. She did not know much, but she did know that an
empty coffee-pot on such a hot place would come to ruin.
Her father emerged from the pantry with a tin-canister in his hand.
"I've sent a telegram to our aunt Maria for her to come right on,"
said he, "but she can't get here before afternoon. I don't suppose
you know how much coffee your mother puts in. I don't suppose you
know about anything."
Maria realized dimly that she was a scape-goat, but there was such
terrible suffering in her father's face that she had no impulse to
rebel. She smelled of the canister which her father held out towards
her with a nervously trembling hand. "Why, father, this is tea; it
isn't coffee," said she.
"Well, if you don't know anything that a big girl like you ought to
know, I should think you might know enough not to try to make coffee
with tea," said her father.
Maria looked at her father in a bewildered sort of way. "I guess the
coffee is in the other canister," said she, meekly.
"Why didn't you say so then?" demanded her father.
Maria was silent. It seemed to her that her father had gone mad.
Harry Edgham made a ferocious stride across the kitchen to the
pantry. Maria followed him. "I guess that is the coffee canister,"
said she, pointing.
"Why didn't you say so, then?" asked her father, viciously, and again
Maria made no reply. Her father seized the coffee canister and
approached the stove. "I don't suppose you know how much she puts in.
I don't suppose you know anything," said he.
"I guess she puts in about a cupful," said Maria, trembling.
"A cupful! with coffee at the price it is now? I guess she doesn't,"
said her father. He poured the coffee-pot full of boiling water from
the tea-kettle, then he tipped the coffee canister into his hand, and
put one small pinch into the pot.
"Oh, father," ventured Maria. "I don't believe--"
"You don't believe what?"
"I don't believe that is enough."
"Of course it's enough. Don't you suppose your father knows how to
make coffee?"
Her father set the coffee-pot on the stove, where it immediately
began to boil. Then he carried back the canister into the pantry, and
returned with a panful of eggs. "You can set the table, I suppose,
anyhow?" said he. "You know enough to do as much as that?"
"Yes, I can do that," replied Maria, with alacrity, and indeed she
could. Her mother had exacted some small household tasks from her,
and setting the table was one of them. She hurried into the
dining-room and began setting the table with the pretty blue-flowered
ware that her mother had been so proud of. She seemed to feel tears
in her heart when she laid the plates, but none sprang to her eyes.
Somehow, handling these familiar inanimate things was the acutest
torture. Presently she smelled eggs burning. She realized that her
father was burning up the eggs, in his utter ignorance of cookery.
She thought privately that she didn't believe but she could cook the
eggs, but she dared not go out in the kitchen. Her father, in his
anxiety, had actually reached ferocity. He had always petted her, in
his easy-going fashion, now he terrified her. She dared not go out
there.
All at once, as she was getting the clean napkins from the sideboard,
she heard the front door open, and one of the neighbors, Mrs. Jonas
White, entered without knocking. She was a large woman and carelessly
dressed, but her great face was beaming with kindness and pity.
"I just heard how bad your ma was," she said, in a loud whisper, "an'
I run right over. I thought mebbe--How is she?"
"She is very sick," replied Maria. She felt at first an impulse to
burst into tears before this broadside of sympathy, then she felt
stiff.
"You are as white as a sheet," said Mrs. White. "Who is burnin' eggs
out there?" She pointed to the kitchen.
"Father."
"Lord! Who's up-stairs?"
"Miss Bell and the doctors. They've sent for Aunt Maria, but she
can't come before afternoon."
Mrs. White fastened a button on her waist. "Well, I'll stay till
then," said she. "Lillian can get along all right." Lillian was Mrs.
White's eighteen-year-old daughter.
Mrs. White opened the kitchen door. "How is she?" she said in a
hushed voice to Harry Edgham, frantically stirring the burned eggs,
which sent up a monstrous smoke and smell. As she spoke, she went
over to him, took the frying-pan out of his hands, and carried it
over to the sink.
"She is a very sick woman," replied Harry Edgham, looking at Mrs.
White with a measure of gratitude.
"You've got Dr. Williams and Miss Bell, Maria says?"
"Yes."
"Maria says her aunt is coming?"
"Yes, I sent a telegram."
"Well, I'll stay till she gets here," said Mrs. White, and again that
expression of almost childish gratitude came over the man's face.
Mrs. White began scraping the burned eggs off the pan.
"They haven't had any breakfast," said Harry, looking upward.
"And they don't dare leave her?"
"No."
"Well, you just go and do anything you want to, Maria and I will get
the breakfast." Mrs. White spoke with a kindly, almost humorous
inflection. Maria felt that she could go down on her knees to her.
"You are very kind," said Harry Edgham, and he went out of the
kitchen as one who beats a retreat before superior forces.
"Maria, you just bring me the eggs, and a clean cup," said Mrs.
White. "Poor man, trying to cook eggs!" said she of Maria's father,
after he had gone. She was one of the women who always treat men with
a sort of loving pity, as if they were children. "Here is some nice
bacon," said she, rummaging in the pantry. "The eggs will be real
nice with bacon. Now, Maria, you look in the ice-chest and see if
there are any cold potatoes that can be warmed up. There's plenty of
bread in the jar, and we'll toast that. We'll have breakfast in a
jiffy. Doctors do have a hard life, and Miss Bell, she ought to have
her nourishment too, if she's goin' to take care of your mother."
When Maria returned from the ice-box, which stood out in the
woodshed, with a plate of cold potatoes, Mrs. White was sniffing at
the coffee-pot.
"For goodness sake, who made this?" said she.
"Father."
"How much did he put in?"
"He put in a little pinch."
"It looks like water bewitched," said Mrs. White. "Bring me the
coffee canister. You know where that is, don't you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Maria watched Mrs. White pour out the coffee which her father had
made, and start afresh in the proper manner.
"Men are awful helpless, poor things," said Mrs. White. "This sink is
in an awful condition. Did your father empty all this truck in it?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Well, I must clean it out, as soon as I get the other things goin',
or the dreen will be stopped up." Mrs. White's English was not
irreproachable, but she was masterful.
Maria continued to stand numbly in the middle of the kitchen,
watching Mrs. White, who looked at her uneasily.
"You must be a good girl, and trust in the Lord," said she, and she
tried to make her voice sharp. "Now, don't stand there lookin' on;
just fly round and do somethin'. I don't believe but the dinin'-room
needs dustin'. You find somethin' and dust the dinin'-room real nice,
while I get the breakfast."
Maria obeyed, but she did that numbly, without any realization of the
task.
The morning wore on. The doctors, one at a time came down, and the
nurse came down, and they ate a hearty breakfast. Maria watched them,
and hated them because they could eat while her mother was so ill.
Miss Bell also ate heartily, and she felt that she hated her. She was
glad that her father refused anything except a cup of coffee. As for
herself, Mrs. White made her drink an egg beaten up with milk. "If
you won't eat your breakfast, you've got to take this," said she.
Mrs. White took her own breakfast in stray bites, while she was
clearing away the table. She stayed, and put the house in order,
until Maria's aunt Maria arrived. One of the physicians went away.
For a short time Maria's mother's groans and wailings recommenced,
then the smell of chloroform was strong throughout the house.
"I wonder why they don't give her morphine instead of chloroform?"
said Mrs. White, while Maria was wiping the dishes. "It is dreadful
dangerous to give that, especially if the heart is weak. Well, don't
you be scart. I've seen folks enough worse than your mother git well."
In the last few hours Maria's face had gotten a hard look. She no
longer seemed like a little girl. After a while the doctors went away.
"I don't suppose there is much they can do for a while, perhaps,"
remarked Mrs. White; "and Miss Bell, she is as good as any doctor."
Both physicians returned a little after noon, and previously Mrs.
Edgham had made her voice of lamentation heard again. Then it ceased
abruptly, but there was no odor of chloroform.
"They are giving her morphine now, I bet a cooky," Mrs. White said.
She, with Maria, was clearing away the dinner-table then. "What time
do you think your aunt Maria will get here?" she asked.
"About half-past two, father said," replied Maria.
"Well, I'm real glad you've got some one like her you can call on,"
said Mrs. White. "Somebody that 'ain't ever had no family, and 'ain't
tied. Now I'd be willin' to stay right along myself, but I couldn't
leave Lillian any length of time. She 'ain't never had anything hard
put on her, and she 'ain't any too tough. But your aunt can stay
right along till your mother gits well, can't she?"
"I guess so," replied Maria.
There was something about Maria's manner which made Mrs. White
uneasy. She forced conversation in order to make her speak, and do
away with that stunned look on her face. All the time now Maria was
saying to herself that her mother was going to die, that God could
make her well, but He would not. She was conscious of blasphemy, and
she took a certain pleasure in it.
Her aunt Maria arrived on the train expected, and she entered the
house, preceded by the cabman bearing her little trunk, which she had
had ever since she was a little girl. It was the only trunk she had
ever owned. Both physicians and the nurse were with Mrs. Edgham when
her sister arrived. Harry Edgham had been walking restlessly up and
down the parlor, which was a long room. He had not thought of going
to the station to meet Aunt Maria, but when the cab stopped before
the house he hurried out at once. Aunt Maria was dressed wholly in
black--a black mohair, a little black silk cape, and a black bonnet,
from which nodded a jetted tuft. "How is she?" Maria heard her say,
in a hushed voice, to her father. Maria stood in the door. Maria
heard her father say something in a hushed tone about an operation.
Aunt Maria came up the steps with her travelling-bag. Harry forgot to
take it. She greeted Mrs. White, whom she had met on former visits,
and kissed Maria. Maria had been named for her, and been given a
silver cup with her name inscribed thereon, which stood on the
sideboard, but she had never been conscious of any distinct affection
for her. There was a queer, musty odor, almost a fragrance, about
Aunt Maria's black clothes.
"Take the trunk up the stairs, to the room at the left," said Harry
Edgham, "and go as still as you can." The man obeyed, shouldering the
little trunk with an awed look.
Aunt Maria drew Mrs. White and Maria's father aside, and Maria was
conscious that they did not want her to hear; but she did
overhear--"...one chance in ten, a fighting chance," and "Keep it
from Maria, her mother had said so." Maria knew perfectly well that
that horrible and mysterious thing, an operation, which means a duel
with death himself, was even at that moment going on in her mother's
room. She slipped away, and went up-stairs to her own chamber, and
softly closed the door. Then she forgot her lack of faith and her
rebellion, and she realized that her only hope of life was from that
which is outside life. She knelt down beside her bed, and began to
pray over and over, "O God, don't let my mother die, and I will
always be a good girl! O God, don't let my mother die, and I will
always be a good girl!"
Then, without any warning, the door opened and her father stood
there, and behind him was her aunt Maria, weeping bitterly, and Mrs.
White, also weeping.
"Maria," gasped out Harry Edgham. Then, as Maria rose and went to
him, he seized upon her as if she were his one straw of salvation,
and began to sob himself, and Maria knew that her mother had died.