"And what next?" I asked myself after my head was on the pillow and
while staring hour after hour at the opposite wall. Surely I had read
enough of love! I had imagined what it might be like, even if I had
never experienced it, even if I had thought little enough about it in
connection with myself. I did not know it on what might be called the
positive side, but I seemed to have some knowledge of it negatively. I
knew it could be cruel, cruel as death; my own mother was a dead
witness to that. I knew it could be brutal when passion alone means
love; I was eye witness to this on Columbia Heights not so very long
ago. I knew, or thought I knew, that it could be killed, or rather
worn to a thread by the slow grinding of adverse circumstance. I
recalled my own lack of affection after the years of sacrifice for the
imbecile grandfather, my shiftless aunt.
And now, in the face of such knowledge, to have this revelation! This
sudden absorption in another of my humankind; all my thought at once,
without warning, transferred to that other wherever he might be; all
interest in life centering with the force of gravity in that other's
life; "at home" only in that other's presence; at rest only by his
side--
"Now, look here, Marcia Farrell, don't you be Jane Eyrey," I said to
myself in a low but stern voice. I sat up in bed and drew the extra
comforter about my shoulders. "No nonsense at your age! You accept
the fact that you love this man,--and you will have to whether you want
to or not,--a man who has never spoken a word of love to you, who has
treated you with the consideration, it is no more, no less than that,
which he shows to every member of his household. Now, make the most of
this fact, but without showing it. Don't make the youthful mistake,
since you are no longer a girl, of fancying he is reciprocating what
you feel, feeling your every feeling, thinking your every thought.
And, above all, don't betray your self at this crisis of your life, to
him or any member of his household--not to Delia Beaseley, not to
Doctor Rugvie. Rest in his presence when you can. Rejoice to be near
him--but inwardly, only, remember that!--when you shall find
opportunity, but don't make one; discipline yourself in this, there
will be need enough for it. 'Stick to your sure trot'; give full
compensation in work for your wages--and enjoy what this new life may
offer you from day to day. This new joy is your own; keep it to
yourself. Now lie down for good and all, and go to sleep."
Thereupon I snugged down among the welcome warmth of the bed-clothes,
saying to myself:
"I don't care 'what next'. I am so happy--happy--happy--"
But, even as I spoke that word softly--oh, so softly!--laying the palm
of my right hand, that still felt the strong throbbing of his, under my
cheek, I remembered that Cale had never once called me by the name he
had proposed, "Happy"; that Jamie noticed the omission and remarked on
it.
And what did Cale know? What could he know? There used to be a family
of Marstins in our town before I was born. My aunt told me once that
her sister married into the family; that, too, was before I was born.
I never knew any one of the name, and I never cared to look at the old
family headstones. The churchyard, because it held my mother, was
hateful to me.
And I? I was too cowardly to ask Cale why he omitted to call me by his
chosen name; for by that name my mother was known among her own, so I
was told--that mother whom I never knew, whose memory I never loved, of
whom I was ashamed because people said she had belied her womanhood.
But ever since Delia Beaseley opened my eyes to a portion of the truth
concerning her, I had felt great pity for her. Now, at the thought of
her, dying for love, for this very thing that had come to me like
lightning out of the blue, dying without friends in that dull basement
in V---- Court, my heartstrings contracted, literally, for I
experienced a feeling of suffocation.
"Mother, oh, mother," I cried out under my breath, "was it for this,
that I know to be love, you gave your all, even life itself? Oh, I
have understood so little--so little; I have been so hard, mother. I
did n't know--forgive me, mother--forgive, I never knew--"
It eased me to speak out these words, although I knew that in giving
utterance to them my ears were the only ones the sound of my pleading
could reach. Those ears, on which the word mother would have fallen so
blessedly, would never hear, could never hear. Not so very far away,
in northern New England, the snows lay white and deep, as white and
deep as in Canada, on her neglected grave.
Something Delia Beaseley quoted from my mother in her hour of trial
flashed again into consciousness: "The little life that is coming is
worth all this." And my mother must have said it knowing all the joy,
the bliss, the suffering, both of body and of soul, that this love must
in due time bring to her daughter, because she was a woman-child.
What a Dolorous Way my mother must have trodden, must have been willing
to tread for _this_!
There are minutes, rare in the longest lives, when life becomes so
intensified that vision clears almost preternaturally, sees through
telescopic lenses, so to speak. At such moments, the soul becomes so
highly sensitized that it may photograph for future reference the birth
or passing of Love's star.