‘A LITTLE FOLDING OF THE HANDS TO SLEEP’
“Not so, not cold! but very poor instead!
Ask God who knows! for frequent tears have run
The colours from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head,
Go farther! Let it serve to trample on.”
Mrs. Wise was dead.
The second year of the little school life at Sunnymeade she had fallen
ill of typhoid fever, and though cured at length of that, she had
seemed too listless and tired to struggle back to health.
She slipped away, away; there came a week when the little boys trod
softly about the house, and looked at her with round awed eyes, and
never answered a word back when she fretted at them as usual for their
noise, their muddy boots, their quarrellings.
What was the strange thing their father had told them that morning?
Their mother dying, dying fast. And yet how strange!—she still lay on
the old sofa in the dining-room, and only that very morning had sewn
up the buttonhole of little Alf’s braces, and stitched the torn brim of
Teddie’s hat.
Dying! Why, she had spoken irritably to their father an hour ago, and
had smacked baby’s hands because he would squeeze the thin kitten and
drag it across the room by the tail. Surely dying people spoke softly
and wept, and said gentle things and prayed—prayed all the time!
The boys were inclined to disbelieve their father, who had told them
the fact thus beforehand, that she, poor soul, might in her last days
have gentleness and tenderness around her all the time.
“Doesn’t she know, Daddie?” little Alf whispered in the afternoon that
followed the morning on which they had first learnt the news.
He had been sitting on a stool not far from the sofa, gazing at
his mother with solemn, half-frightened eyes, while she sewed on a
commonplace and necessary button. She had scolded him for getting it
off again so soon—surely, surely it was impossible that she could think
of such things if she were as ill as his father had said?
When Dr. Wise entered the room, the child could not forbear to put the
question, though he had been warned carefully to say nothing before his
mother.
He crept to his father, still with that earnest, half-fearful
expression in his eyes.
“Doesn’t she know, Daddie?” he whispered, and thought he had made his
voice very small and soft. But lusty little Alf’s whisper!
His father frowned him from the room, and he moved to go in instant,
frightened haste, holding his knickerbockers up as he went.
“He can’t go without his braces,” said the voice from the sofa; “come
here, Alf.”
The child moved back to her and stood nervously still while she
fastened the little straps in place.
“There,” she said, “now go and play, and don’t get your clean coat
dirtied, and don’t let me hear you quarrelling with Richie, and be a
kind little brother too, and let Freddie get in your cart if he wants
to.”
“Yes, mother dear,” said Alf, and gave her one more strange little look
and passed out of the room.
“Did you drink your port, Ellie?” the doctor said, glancing at the
lunch-tray near her. His eyes were looking at her very tenderly.
Did she—_did_ she know, or must he tell her in so many words?
“No, I didn’t,” she said; “it is foolish of you to get it—you know you
can’t afford seven-and-six a bottle.”
“I think I can, dear,” he said gently.
“Oh!” she said, and the fret in her voice jarred him strangely, “just
look at those grease-spots on your waistcoat. Didn’t Sarah set your
table-napkin? The careless, heedless creature! Yet how you can let
food drop like that I don’t know. It is a pretty example for the
children. And you never think of me, always cleaning and sponging your
clothes for you.”
The doctor looked with troubled eyes at the drop or two of tea his
waistcoat still bore from his hurriedly swallowed lunch. Then he drew
out his handkerchief and rubbed the marks anxiously away.
“See, they don’t show, dear,” he said gently.
“Let me see,” she said.
He came closer for inspection, his eyes still looking down ruefully at
his coat.
“Robert! Robert!” she cried, and the suddenly changed voice seemed to
come from a depth of anguish he had never dreamt it was in her nature
to sound. He looked at her, startled, saw her working face and the
agony in her eyes, and was down on his knees beside her, holding her,
helping her, great tears bursting from his eyes.
“Oh!” she said, when her voice came to her again, after a speechless
indrawing of breath, “do you think I don’t know? Do you really think I
don’t know? Do you think I didn’t hear poor little Alf and see his big
eyes? Do you think I haven’t known for weeks—weeks?”
“Hush!” he said, his tears raining hotter, “hush, Ellie—Ellie, dear
one.”
She gave a dreadful little laugh.
“Oh! I don’t mind,” she said, “I don’t mind in the least. You will all
be glad, I know. Oh, of course you will be decently sorry first—black
bands on your arms and all that, even if the money won’t run to black
suits. But even baby will laugh and crow more when there is no one
worrying, worrying all day long.”
“Ellie,” he said, “Ellie—for God’s sake.”
“I like to see you crying,” she said, “one wouldn’t like to think no
one spared any tears. But I can see you so well in a month from now,
smoking peacefully on this sofa with no nagging voice going on and on.”
“Ellie,” he said, “isn’t it hard enough for me? Are you trying to
torture me past endurance?”
Her lips trembled; she tried to be hard again, but failed. Then she
gave a piteous sob.
“I can’t help it, Rob,” she said, and clung to him. “Ever since I’ve
known, I’ve been trying to be different, to act as one should with
death to face. But oh! if you _knew_ what it is to feel you have
bungled your life, so that no one will care when you’re gone! Every
time I have been irritable lately I have wondered at myself, but”—her
voice choked—“if I hadn’t had that relief I couldn’t have borne it.”
“My wife, my poor little wife,” he said; he stroked her hair, he held
her nervous hand. “God knows you have done your best; the odds have
been heavy against us both, that is all. Oh! if I had been more tender
to you, poor little girl!”
Her lips quivered again.
“You have nothing to reproach yourself with, Robert,” she said,
“everything was my fault. Do you think I don’t remember now how often
you wanted to be loving—wanted to pet me? And I was always too busy,
always making a Martha of myself, always toiling after the little boys.”
He sighed a little—an irrepressible sigh; a vision of their spoilt
lives stood mutely before him.
“But—no,” he said, “no, no—the fault has been mine; surely I could have
worked harder and made life easier for you.”
She shook her head and leaned against him in silence for a little space.
She spoke calmly, quietly.
“When I am dead, I should like you to marry Mrs. Conway,” she said.
“Oh, hush, hush, hush!” he cried; “Ellie, I _cannot_ stand much more.”
“I am not trying to hurt you now,” she said. “Don’t think I am just
saying this as a martyr might. I could go quite peacefully if I felt
my poor old Rob was going to taste happiness, after all these wretched
years. I feel as if I had been like the dresses I wear that Clif
hates—a nondescript, colourless thing. And Life itself is such a dull,
grey affair at best, I ought to have tried to be a bright colour.”
Through the window came the voices of the little boys, all their
soberness dispersed by the sun’s merry magic.
“I’m off to get locusts,” shouted Richie. The clatter of his strong
little boots sounded along the wooden verandah.
Lighter footfalls followed—“Me, me too, Richie,” cried Alfie’s voice.
And toddling steps came along eagerly, stumblingly. “Me dit gwirlies,
me dit gwirlies, Wichie.”
“Oh, my boys, my boys!” the mother sobbed, “and they will only remember
me carping, fretful, scolding. But no one will keep Alfie from telling
stories now, and Richie from being greedy, and Clif from selfishness.”
“I will do my best, Ellie,” said the poor doctor.
“But you are away,” she said despairingly, “how can you watch them? You
_must_ give them another mother.”
But again he implored her not to make it too hard for him, and she
grew silent, and leaning her head against him stared with wistful eyes
about the shabby, comfortless room, that soon would know her no more.
And yet there was a strange pleasure in the thought of shutting her
eyes for ever on it. Since the time Clif was a fractious, delicate
baby (he was fourteen now), it seemed to her she had never known what
it was to have an unbroken night. Oh! the peace of death, the exquisite
restfulness!—she felt too tired to lift her eyes just yet to green
pastures or streets of sardonyx and pearls,—all she wanted was to be
left alone to sleep, sleep, sleep.
Away in her own cottage, some days later, Mrs. Conway’s eyes were wet
over a parcel of books Clif had just brought her.
The lad’s eyes were red, his mouth twitched at every word; it was
only yesterday he and his father and Teddie and Alf had stood by that
yawning grave, and watched their mother put away out of sight and sound
for all time.
“Father says she asked him to give you these,” he said, thrusting out
his parcel; Mrs. Conway’s eyes filled at his desolate looks; she put
her arm round his shoulder as he stood there.
“Poor old fellow, poor old fellow,” she said.
“If you _knew_ what a beast I’ve been to her,” he burst out. Then his
tears choked him, and he pushed her comforting arm aside, and went to
break his heart in his old hiding-place. There was a note with the
books.
“You are the only woman friend I have,” it said, “so there is no one
else I can ask this of. Help my little boys all you can, and in any way
you can brighten my husband’s life.
“I send you these books, they may help you—to me they seemed cruelly
hard to follow. And I send you my own notes of the boys’ characters. I
know quite well this is not a small thing I am asking, but what can I
do? Five little boys, the bitter world, and no woman. Forgive me, and
help me thus, when I am past all other helping.”
Oh, the books! _Human Buds_, of course, and all its marvellous maxims
and rules; _Souls and Minds of Children_; and _Our Responsibilities to
the Young_.
But the red note-book was the most pitiful. Such laboured notes, such
anxious writing down of smallest detail of each lad’s behaviour.
Even Richie’s four-year-old sinfulness was soberly expatiated upon.
“Did his present greediness indicate a tendency to avarice in the
future?” asked the sad pen. “Must watch carefully and pass nothing by,”
it added. “Memo: deprive him of sweet things for a day—most efficacious
punishment.”
And Alfie,—Alfie who at one time showed a tendency to stray from
truth’s narrow path when such rending questions as “Who stole the
cake?” or “Who broke the window?” were sternly put. “Alfie,” said the
notes, “must be appealed to through his better nature, must be told
stories of noble men and boys; Washington’s glorious tale among others.”
There was even a page headed “Little Baby.” Baby was passionate, it
seemed, more so than any of the others; he hit the table angrily if
he bumped his head, he screamed himself into fits if sugar was not
forthcoming.
“If not checked, might not such anger lead him,” said the frightened
notes, “some day to some dreadful crime?”
After this, the last note in the book, there were blots that tears
might have caused, or a pen let fall despairingly.
Phyl and Dolly coming in to ask had not Richie and Alf better be kept
for tea, found their mother sobbing over the pitiful strivings and
gropings of that poor dead woman.