I could not have been more than seven years old, when one night I woke
up shivering, at the sound of angry voices. A conversation which no
child should ever have heard, was going on in the room where I lay. My
father was talking to my sister--perhaps, you do not know that I have
a sister; few of my personal friends do,--and the terror she evinced
I could well understand but not his words nor the real cause of his
displeasure.
There are times even yet when the picture, forced upon my infantile
consciousness at that moment of first awakening, comes back to me with
all its original vividness. There was no light in the room save such as
the moon made; but that was enough to reveal the passion burningly alive
in either face, as, bending towards each other, she in supplication
and he in a tempest of wrath which knew no bounds, he uttered and she
listened to what I now know to have been a terrible arraignment.
I may have an interesting countenance; you have told me so sometimes;
but she--she was beautiful. My elder by ten years, she had stood in my
mother’s stead to me for almost as long as I could remember, and as I
saw her lovely features contorted with pain and her hands extended in
a desperate plea to one who had never shown me anything but love, my
throat closed sharply and I could not cry out though I wanted to, nor
move head or foot though I longed with all my heart to bury myself in
the pillows.
For the words I heard were terrifying, little as I comprehended their
full purport. He had surprised her talking from her window to someone
down below, and after saying cruel things about that, he shouted out:
“You have disgraced me, you have disgraced yourself, you have disgraced
your brother and your little sister. Was it not enough that you should
refuse to marry the good man I had picked out for you, that you should
stoop to this low-down scoundrel--this--” I did not hear what else he
called him, I was wondering so to whom she had been stooping; I had
never seen her stoop except to tie my little shoes.
But when she cried out as she did after an interval, “I love him! I
love him!” then I listened again, for she spoke as though she were in
dreadful pain, and I did not know that loving made one ill and unhappy.
“And I am going to marry him,” I heard her add, standing up, as she said
it, very straight and tall.
Marry! I knew what that meant. A long aisle in a church; women in white
and big music in the air behind. I had been flower-girl at a wedding
once and had not forgotten. We had had ice cream and cake and--
But my childish thoughts stopped short at the answer she received and
all the words which followed--words which burned their way into my
infantile brain and left scorched places in my memory which will never
be eradicated. He spoke them--spoke them all; she never answered again
after that once, and when he was gone did not move for a long time and
when she did it was to lie down, stiff and straight, just as she had
stood, on her bed alongside mine.
I was frightened; so frightened, my little brass bed rattled under me. I
wonder she did not hear it. But she heard nothing; and after awhile she
was so still I fell asleep. But I woke again. Something hot had fallen
on my cheek. I put up my hand to brush it away and did not know even
when I felt my fingers wet that it was a tear from my sister-mother’s
eye.
For she was kneeling then; kneeling close beside me and her arm was over
my small body; and the bed was shaking again but not this time with my
tremors only. And I was sorry and cried too until I dropped off to sleep
again with her arm still passionately embracing me.
In the morning, she was gone.
It must have been that very afternoon that Father came in where Arthur
and I were trying to play,--trying, but not quite succeeding, for I had
been telling Arthur, for whom I had a great respect in those days, what
had happened the night before, and we had been wondering in our childish
way if there would be a wedding after all, and a church full of people,
and flowers, and kissing, and lots of good things to eat, and Arthur had
said No, it was too expensive; that that was why Father was so angry;
and comforted by the assertion, I was taking up my doll again, when the
door opened and Father stepped in.
It was a great event--any visit from him to the nursery--and we both
dropped our toys and stood staring, not knowing whether he was going
to be nice and kind as he sometimes was, or scold us as I had heard him
scold our beautiful sister.
Arthur showed at once what he thought, for without the least hesitation
he took the one step which placed him in front of me, where he stood
waiting with his two little fists hanging straight at his sides but
manfully clenched in full readiness for attack. That this display of
pigmy chivalry was not quite without its warrant is evident to me now,
for Father did not look like himself or act like himself any more than
he had the night before.
However, we had no cause for fear. Having no suspicion of my having been
awake during his terrible interview with Theresa, he saw only two lonely
and forsaken children, interrupted in their play.
Can I remember what he said to us? Not exactly, though Arthur and I
often went over it choked whispers in some secret nook of the dreary old
house; but his meaning--that we took in well enough. Theresa had left
us. She would never come back. We were not to look out of the window for
her, or run to the door when the bell rang. Our mother had left us too,
a long time ago, and she lay in the cemetery where we sometimes carried
flowers. Theresa was not in the cemetery, but we must think of her as
there; though not as if she had any need of flowers. Having said this,
he looked at us quietly for a minute. Arthur was trying very hard not to
cry, but I was sobbing like the lost child I was, with my cheek against
the floor where I had thrown myself when he said that awful thing about
the cemetery. She there! my sister-mother there! I think he felt a
little sorry for me; for he half stooped as if to lift me up. But he
straightened again and said very sternly:
“Now, children, listen to me. When God takes people to heaven and leaves
us only their cold, dead bodies we carry flowers to their graves and
talk about them some if not very much. But when people die because they
love dark ways better than light, then we do not remember them with
gifts and we do not talk about them. Your sister’s name has been spoken
for the last time in this house. You, Arthur, are old enough to know
what I mean when I say that I will never listen to another word about
her from either you or Violet as long as you and I live. She is gone and
nothing that is mine shall she ever touch again.
“You hear me, Arthur; you hear me, Violet. Heed me, or you go too.”
His aspect was terrible, so was his purpose; much more terrible than
we realized at the time with our limited understanding and experience.
Later, we came to know the full meaning of this black drop which had
been infused into our lives. When we saw every picture of her destroyed
which had been in the house; her name cut out from the leaves of books;
the little tokens she had given us surreptitiously taken away, till not
a vestige of her once beloved presence remained, we began to realize
that we had indeed lost her.
But children as young as we were then do not long retain the poignancy
of their first griefs. Gradually my memories of that awful night ceased
to disturb my dreams and I was sixteen before they were again recalled
to me with any vividness, and then it was by accident. I had been
strolling through a picture gallery and had stopped short to study more
particularly one which had especially taken my fancy. There were two
ladies sitting on a bench behind me and one of them was evidently very
deaf, for their talk was loud, though I am sure they did not mean for
me to hear, for they were discussing my family. That is, one of them had
said:
“That’s Violet Strange. She will never be the beauty her sister was; but
perhaps that’s not to be deplored. Theresa made a great mess of it.”
“That’s true. I hear that she and the Signor have been seen lately here
in town. In poverty, of course. He hadn’t even as much go in him as the
ordinary singing-master.”
I suppose I should have hurried away, and left this barbed arrow to
rankle where it fell. But I could not. I had never learned a word of
Theresa’s fate and that word poverty, proving that she was alive and
suffering, held me to my place to hear what more they might say of
her who for years had been for me an indistinct figure bathed in cruel
moonlight.
“I have never approved of Peter Strange’s conduct at that time,” one of
the voices now went on. “He didn’t handle her right. She had a lovely
disposition and would have listened to him had he been more gentle with
her. But it isn’t in him. I hope this one--”
I didn’t hear the end of that. I had no interest in anything they might
say about myself. It was of her I wanted to hear, of her. Weren’t they
going to say anything more about my poor sister? Yes; it was a topic
which interested both and presently I heard:
“He’ll never do anything for her, no matter what happens; I’ve heard him
say so. And Laura has vowed the same.” (Laura is our aunt.) “Besides,
Theresa has a pride of her own quite equal to her father’s. She wouldn’t
take anything from him now. She’d rather struggle on. I’m told--I don’t
know how true it is--that she’s working in a department store; one of
the Sixth Avenue ones. Oh, there’s Mrs. Vandegraff! Don’t you want to
speak to her?”
They moved off, leaving me still gazing with unseeing eyes at the
picture before which I stood planted, and saying over and over in
monotonous iteration, “One of the department stores in Sixth Avenue! One
of the department stores in Sixth Avenue!”
Which department store?