May 7.
I was awakened and nearly smothered this morning by a pillow thrown
directly at my head.
Somewhat unaccustomed, in the respectable, old maid’s life that I lead,
to such a pleasant little method of salutation, I jerked myself upright,
and stared. There stood Faith in her night-dress, laughing as if she
would suffocate, and her mother in search of her was just knocking at
the open door.
“She insisted on going to wake Cousin Mary, and wouldn’t be washed till
I let her; but I stipulated that she should kiss you softly on both your
eyes.”
“I did,” said Faith, stoutly; “I kissed her eyes, both two of ’em, and
her nose, and her mouth and her neck; then I pulled her hair, and then I
spinched her; but I thought she’d have to be banged a little. _Wasn’t_
it a bang, though!”
It really did me good to begin the day with a hearty laugh. The days
usually look so long and blank at the beginning, that I can hardly make
up my mind to step out into them. Faith’s pillow was the famous pebble
in the pond, to which authors of original imagination invariably resort;
I felt its little circles widening out all through the day. I wonder if
Aunt Winifred thought of that. She thinks of many things.
For instance, afraid apparently that I should think I was afflicted with
one of those professional visitors who hold that a chance relationship
justifies them in imposing on one from the beginning to the end of the
chapter, she managed to make me understand, this morning, that she was
expecting to go back to Uncle Forceythe’s brother on Saturday. I was
surprised at myself to find that this proposition struck me with dismay.
I insisted with all my heart on keeping her for a week at the least, and
sent forth a fiat that her trunks should be unpacked.
We have had a quiet, homelike day. Faith found her way to the orchard,
and installed herself there for the day, overhauling the muddy grass
with her bare hands to find dandelions. She came in at dinner-time as
brown as a little nut, with her hat hanging down her neck, her apron
torn, and just about as dirty as I should suppose it possible for a
clean child to succeed in making herself. Her mother, however, seemed to
be quite used to it, and the expedition with which she made her
presentable I regard as a stroke of genius.
While Faith was disposed of, and the house still, auntie and I took our
knitting and spent a regular old woman’s morning at the south window in
the dining-room. In the afternoon Mrs. Bland came over, babies and all,
and sent up her card to Mrs. Forceythe.
Supper-time came, and still there had not been a word of Roy. I began to
wonder at, while I respected, this unusual silence.
While her mother was putting Faith to bed, I went into my room alone,
for a few moments’ quiet. An early dark had fallen, for it had clouded
up just before sunset. The dull, gray sky and narrow horizon shut down
and crowded in everything. A soldier from the village, who has just come
home, was walking down the street with his wife and sister. The crickets
were chirping in the meadows. The faint breath of the maple came up.
I sat down by the window, and hid my face in both my hands. I must have
sat there some time, for I had quite forgotten that I had company to
entertain, when the door softly opened and shut, and some one came and
sat down on the couch beside me. I did not speak, for I could not, and,
the first I knew, a gentle arm crept about me, and she had gathered me
into her lap and laid my head on her shoulder, as she might have
gathered Faith.
“There,” she said, in her low, lulling voice, “now tell Auntie all about
it.”
I don’t know what it was, whether the voice, or touch, or words, but it
came so suddenly,--and nobody had held me for so long,--that everything
seemed to break up and unlock in a minute, and I threw up my hands and
cried. I don’t know how long I cried.
She passed her hand softly to and fro across my hair, brushing it away
from my temples, while they throbbed and burned; but she did not speak.
By and by I sobbed out:--
“Auntie, Auntie, Auntie!” as Faith sobs out in the dark. It seemed to me
that I must have help or die.
“Yes, dear. I understand. I know how hard it is. And you have been
bearing it alone so long! I am going to help you, and you must tell me
all you can.”
The strong, decided words, “I am going to help you,” gave me the first
faint hope I have had, that I _could_ be helped, and I could tell
her--it was not sacrilege--the pent-up story of these weeks. All the
time her hand went softly to and fro across my hair.
Presently, when I was weak and faint with the new comfort of my tears,
“Aunt Winifred,” I said, “I don’t know what it means to be resigned; I
don’t know what it _means_!”
Still her hand passed softly to and fro across my hair.
“To have everything stop all at once! without giving me any time to
learn to bear it. Why, you do not know,--it is just as if a great black
gate had swung to and barred out the future, and barred out him, and
left me all alone in any world that I can ever live in, forever and
forever.”
“My child,” she said, with emphasis solemn and low upon the words,--“my
child, I _do_ know. I think you forget--my husband.”
I had forgotten. How could I? We are most selfishly blinded by our own
griefs. No other form than ours ever seems to walk with us in the
furnace. Her few words made me feel, as I could not have felt if she had
said more, that this woman who was going to help me had suffered too;
had suffered perhaps more than I,--that, if I sat as a little child at
her feet, she could teach me through the kinship of her pain.
“O my dear,” she said, and held me close, “I have trodden every step of
it before you,--every single step.”
“But you never were so wicked about it! You never felt--why, I have been
_afraid_ I should hate God! You never were so wicked as that.”
Low under her breath she answered “Yes,”--this sweet, saintly woman who
had come to me in the dark as an angel might.