It was a long ride, and the trolley was chilly. Cornelia tried to
keep from shivering and smile at everything Louise and Harry told
her, but somehow things had got on her nerves. She had broken out
into a perspiration with all the excitement at the station, and now
felt cold and miserable. Her eyeballs ached with the frequent tears
that had slipped their salt way that afternoon; and her head was
heavy, and heavier her heart.
Across the way sat her father, looking grayer and more worn in the
garish light of the trolley. His hair straggled and needed cutting,
and his cheeks were quite hollow. He gave a hollow cough now and
then, and his eyes looked like haunted spirits; but he smiled
contentedly across to her whenever he caught her glance. She knew he
meant that she should feel how glad he was to get her back. She began
to feel very mean in her heart that she could not echo his gladness.
She knew she ought to, but somehow visions of what she had left
behind, probably forever, got between her and her duty, and pulled
down the corners of her mouth in a disheartening droop that made
her smiles a formal thing, though she tried, she really did try, to
be what this worn old father evidently expected her to be, a model
daughter, glad to get home and sacrifice everything in life for them
all.
These thoughts made her responses to the children only half-hearted.
Harry was trying to tell her how the old dog had died and they had
only the little pup left, but it was so game it could beat any cat on
the street in a fight already, and almost any dog.
Louise chimed in with a tale about a play in school that she had
to be in if Nellie would only help her get up a costume out of old
things. But gradually the talk died down, and Louise sat looking
thoughtfully across at her father’s tired face, while Harry frowned
and puckered his lips in a contemplative attitude, shifting his
gum only now and then enough to keep it going and fixing his eyes
very wide and blue in deep melancholy upon the toe of his father’s
worn shoe. Something was fast going wrong with the spirits of the
children, and Cornelia was so engrossed in herself and her own bitter
disappointment that she hadn’t even noticed it.
In the midst of the blueness the car stopped, and Mr. Copley rose
stiffly with an apologetic smile toward his elder daughter.
“Well, this is about where we get off, Nellie,” he said half
wistfully, as if he had done his brave best and it was now up to her.
Something in his tone brought Cornelia keenly to her senses. She
stumbled off the car, and looked around her breathlessly, while
the car rumbled on up a strange street with scattering houses,
wide open spaces reminding one of community baseball diamonds, and
furtive heaps of tin cans and ashes. The sky was wide and open, with
brilliant stars gleaming gaudily against the night, and a brazen moon
that didn’t seem to understand how glaringly every defect in the
locality stood out; but that only made the place seem more strange
and barren to the girl. She had not known what she expected, but
certainly not this. The houses about her were low and small, some of
them of red brick made all alike, with faded greenish-blue shutters,
and a front door at one side opening on a front yard of a few feet in
dimensions, with a picket fence about it, or sometimes none at all.
The house her father was leading her to was a bit taller than the
rest, covered with clapboards weather-beaten and stained, guiltless
of paint, as could be seen even at night, high and narrow, with
gingerbread-work in the gable and not even a porch to grace its poor
bare face, only two steps and a plain wooden door.
Cornelia gasped, and hurried in to shut herself and her misery away
from the world. Was this what they had come to? No wonder her mother
had given out! No wonder her father—— But then her father—how could
he have let them come to a place like this? It was terrible!
Inside, at the end of the long, narrow hall the light from the
dining-room shone cheerfully from a clean kerosene-lamp guiltless of
shade, flaring across a red and white tablecloth.
“We haven’t done a thing to the parlor yet,” said the father sadly,
throwing open a door at his right as Cornelia followed him. “Your
mother hadn’t the strength!” he sighed deeply. “But then,” he added
more cheerfully, “what are parlors when we are all alive and getting
well?”
Cornelia cast a wondering look at him. She had not known her father
thought so much of her mother. There was a half-glorified look on
his face that made her think of a boy in love. It was queer to think
it, but of course her mother and father had been young lovers once.
Cornelia, her thoughts temporarily turned from her own brooding,
followed into the desolate dining-room, and her heart sank. This was
home! This was what she had come back to after all her dreams of a
career and all her pride over an artistic temperament!
There was a place set for her at one end of the red-clothed table,
and a plaintive little supper drying up on the stove in the kitchen;
but Cornelia was not hungry. She made pretence of nibbling at
the single little burned lamb-chop and a heavy soda-biscuit. If
she had known how the children had gone without meat to buy that
lamb-chop, and how hard Louise had worked to make these biscuits
and the apple-sauce that accompanied them, she might have been more
appreciative; but as it was she was feeling very miserable indeed,
and had no time from her own self-pitying thoughts to notice them at
all.
The dining-room was a dreary place. An old sofa that had done noble
duty in the family when Cornelia was a baby lounged comfortably at
one side, a catch-all for overcoats, caps, newspapers, bundles,
mending, anything that happened along. Three of the dining-room
chairs were more or less gone or emaciated in their seats. The cat
was curled up comfortably in the old wooden rocker that had always
gone by the name of “Father’s rocker,” and wore an ancient patchwork
cushion. The floor was partly covered by a soiled and worn Axminster
rug whose roses blushed redly still behind wood-colored scrolls on an
indiscriminate background that no one would ever suspect of having
been pearl-gray once upon a time. The wall-paper was an ugly dirty
dark-red, with tarnished gold designs, torn in places and hanging
down, greasy and marred where chairs had rubbed against it and heads
had apparently leaned. It certainly was not a charming interior. She
curled her lip slightly as she took it all in. This her home! And she
a born artist and interior decorator!
Her silence and lack of enthusiasm dampened the spirits of the
children, who had looked to her coming to brighten the dreary aspect
of things. They began to sit around silently and watch her, their
keen young eyes presently searching out her thoughts, following her
gaze from wall-paper to curtainless window, from broken chair to
sagging couch.
“We haven’t been able to get very much to rights,” sighed Louise in
a suddenly grown-up, responsible tone, wrinkling her pink young brow
into lines of care. “I wanted to put up some curtains before you got
here, but I couldn’t find them. Father wouldn’t let me open the boxes
till Carey came home to help. He said there was enough around for me
to tend to, all alone, now.”
“Of course,” assented the elder sister briefly and not at all
sympathetically. In her heart she was thinking that curtains wouldn’t
make any difference. What was the use of trying to do anything,
anyway? Suppose the beautiful stranger who had been so sure she would
make her home lovely could see her now. What would she think? She
drew a deep sigh.
“I guess maybe I better go to bed,” said Louise suddenly, blinking
to hide a tendency to tears. It was somehow all so different from
what she had expected. She had thought it would be almost like having
mother back, and it wasn’t at all. Cornelia seemed strange and
difficult.
“Yes,” said the father, coming up from the cellar, where he had
been putting the erratic furnace to bed for the night; “you and
Harry better get right up to bed. You have to get up so early in the
morning.”
“Perhaps you’d like to come, too,” said Louise, turning to Cornelia
with one more attempt at hospitality. “You know you have to sleep
with me; that is I sleep with you.” She smiled apologetically. “There
isn’t any other room, you know,” she explained as she saw the look of
dismay on Cornelia’s face. “I wanted to fix up the linen-closet for
me, but father couldn’t find another cot yet. Harry sleeps on one cot
up in a little skylight place in the third story that was only meant
for a ladder to go up to the roof. Carey has the only real room on
the third floor, and there aren’t but two on the second besides the
little speck of a bathroom and the linen-closet.”
A sudden realization of the trouble in the little sister’s eyes and
voice brought Cornelia somewhat to her senses.
“That’s all right, chicken,” she said, pinching the little girl’s
cheek playfully. “We won’t fight, I guess. I’m quite used to a
roommate, you know.”
Louise’s face bloomed into smiles of hopefulness.
“Oh, that will be nice,” she sighed. “Are you coming to bed now?”
“You run along, Louise,” put in her father. “I guess Nellie and I
will have a bit of a talk before she comes up. She’ll want to know
all about mother, you know.”
The two children withdrew, and Cornelia tried to forget herself once
more and bring her reluctant thoughts to her immediate future and the
task that was before her.
“What is the matter with mother?” she asked suddenly, her thoughts
still half impatient over the interruption to her career. It was time
she understood more definitely just what had come in to stop her at
this important time of her life. She wished that mother herself had
written; mother never made so much of things, although of course she
didn’t want to hurt her father by saying so.
“Why, she was all run down,” said Mr. Copley, a shade of deep sadness
coming over his gray face. “You see she had been scrimping herself
for a long time, saving, that the rest of us might have more. We
didn’t know it, of course, or we would have stopped it.” His voice
was shamed and sorrowful. “We found she hadn’t been eating any
meat,”—his voice shook like an old man’s,—“just to—save—more for the
rest of us.”
Cornelia looked up with a curl on her lip and a flash in her eyes;
but there was something in her father’s broken look that held back
the words of blame that had almost sprung to her lips, and he went
on with his tale in a tone like a confession, as if the burden of it
were all on him, and were a cloak of shame that he must wear. It was
as if he wanted to tell it all at its worst.
“She didn’t tell us, either, when she began to feel bad. She must
have been running down for the last three years; in fact, ever since
you went away. Though she never let on. When Molly had to go home
to her folks, your mother decided not to try to keep a servant. She
said she could get along better with sending out the washing, and
servants were a scarce article, and cost a lot. I didn’t want her
to; but you know how your mother always was, and I had kind of got
used to letting her have her own way, especially as about that time
I had all I could do night and day at the office to try to prevent
what I saw was coming for the business. She worked too hard. I shall
never forgive myself!” He suddenly buried his face in his hands, and
groaned.
It was awful to Cornelia. She wanted to run and fling her arms about
his neck and comfort him; yet she couldn’t help blaming him. Was he
so weak? Why hadn’t he been more careful of the business, and not let
things get into such a mess? A man oughtn’t to be weak. But the sight
of his trouble touched her strangely. How thin and gray his hair
looked! It struck her again that he looked aged since she had seen
him last. It gave her the effect of a cold douche in her face.
“Don’t father!” she said, her voice full of suppressed pain, and a
glint of tenderness.
“Well, I know I oughtn’t to trouble you this way, daughter,” he said,
looking up with a deprecatory smile; “but somehow it comes over me
how much she suffered in silence before we found it out, and then I
can’t stand it, especially when I think what she was when I married
her, so fresh-faced and pretty with brown hair and eyes just like
yours. You make me think a lot of her, daughter. Well, it’s all over,
thank the Lord,” he went on with a sigh, “and she’s on the mend
again. You don’t know what it was to me the day of the operation.”
“Operation!” The word caught in Cornelia’s throat, and a chill
of horror crept over her. “Why, you never told me there was an
operation!”
“I know,” her father said apologetically. “That was mother, too! she
wouldn’t have you troubled. She said it was just your examination
time, and it would mean a great deal to you to get your marks; and it
would only be a time of anxiety to you, and she was so sure she would
come out all right. She was wonderfully brave, your mother was. And
she hoped so much she’d be able to get up and around, and not have
to bring you home till your course was over. We meant to manage it
somehow; but you see we didn’t know how serious it was, and how she
would have to go away and stay a long time till she was strong.”
Cornelia’s eyes were filled with tears now. She had forgotten her
own disappointments and the way she had been blaming her father, and
was filled with remorse for the little mother who had suffered and
thought of her to the last. She got up quickly, and went over to
gather the bowed head of her father into her unaccustomed arms and
try somehow to be daughterly. It was strange because she had been
away so long and had got out of the way of little endearments, but
she managed it so that the big man was comforted and smiled at her,
and told her again and again how good it was to have her back, almost
as good as having her mother. Then he stroked her hair, looked into
her wise young eyes, and called her his little Nellie-girl, the way
she could remember his doing before she went away to school.
When Cornelia went upstairs at last with the kerosene-lamp held high
above her head so that she would not stumble up the steep, winding
staircase, she had almost forgotten herself and her ambitions, and
was filled with a desire to comfort her father.
She dropped into her place beside the sleeping sister with a
martyr-like quiet, and failed to notice the discouraged droop of the
little huddled figure, and the tear-stained cheek that was turned
toward the dingy wall. The dreariness of the room and the close
quarters had brought depression upon her spirits once more, and she
lay a long time filled with self-pity, and wondering how in the world
she was ever to endure it all.