THE MOTHER COMES TO HER OWN
It was ten days or more after this that Mrs. De Jarnette's carriage
stood at the door ready to convey her to the Capitol. It was confidently
expected that the bill would come up now within a few days and there
were a good many working bees around that classic edifice. Mrs. Belden
had asked Mrs. De Jarnette to go with her that afternoon.
Since her talk with Judge Kirtley Margaret had been unremitting in her
labors. Mrs. Belden told Mrs. Pennybacker that she had never done more
efficient work. There was something very touching, she said, in her
plea, so simply but so effectively urged, "It will not help me, but it
will help other women."
"It almost seems," said Mrs. Pennybacker, in repeating this to Judge
Kirtley only the day before, "as if this thing were slowly purging her
of self. She is being tried in the fire, but she will come out of it
with the dross burned away. I never have seen a woman grow in character
as Margaret De Jarnette has in this trying half year."
"I trust she may get her reward," said the Judge. "But there is no
telling. I tremble for her if there should be an adverse decision."
"There is one thing,"--Mrs. Pennybacker spoke solemnly.--"The Lord is
preparing Margaret for whatever He is preparing _for_ her. Her ear has
been opened to sorrow's cry, and her hands will never be utterly empty
again.
'God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.'
That is as true now as it was when Cowper--under the shadow of a great
cloud--said it."
Margaret was buttoning her gloves when there came a knock at the door.
She had just come down from Rosalie's room. Since her talk with Mrs.
Pennybacker on the Ellipse, she had been particularly careful not to
neglect the poor girl, and had tried in every way to brighten her up.
"She is so weak and her situation so peculiar that she might easily see
slights that were never intended," she was saying to herself.
She took the card that the servant handed her and glanced at the clock
with a shade of annoyance. She would just have time to meet her
engagement at the Capitol without interruption. As she looked at the
card her face blanched. It read
"Mr. Richard De Jarnette."
In the parlor she hardly waited for a conventional greeting.
"What is it? Has anything happened to Philip?"
"Yes," he answered gravely. "Philip is ill--not alarmingly so, I hope,
but seriously."
"What is the matter with him? How long has he been sick?"
"I knew nothing of it till yesterday morning, though Mammy Cely tells me
he was restless and feverish all the night before. I sent for the doctor
at once and he got a nurse there by noon. I shall get another one
to-day--a night nurse."
"Two nurses! What do they think it is?"
"The doctor pronounces it scarlet fever."
"Scarlet fever!" Every vestige of color left her face. "How could he
have taken scarlet fever? Has he been exposed to it?" Then rapidly
counting back, "It must have been at the egg-rolling!"
Since she had answered her own question Mr. De Jarnette apparently did
not consider it necessary to do so. She looked at her watch and moved
across the room.
"I assure you that he shall have every possible care--but I felt that
you ought to know. If you should wish to go to him--"
She turned as she reached the bell and looked at him without reply.
"Tell Fanny to pack a few things suitable for the sick room in my suit
case," she said to the servant who answered, "and be quick about it."
She called him back to add, "Send Mrs. Pennybacker to me."
"Can we catch the three o'clock train?" she asked in a voice so
contained that he looked at her in astonishment.
"I fear not. And the next does not go till five. If--I notice that your
carriage is at the door. If you would not mind the ride that would be
the quickest way to get there. We could make it in an hour by good
driving."
"Then we will go that way." Just at this minute Mrs. Pennybacker came
in. She sat down, looking her surprise at seeing Mr. De Jarnette. There
was that in his face which precluded the thought of his being here for
any trivial reason.
"I am going with Mr. De Jarnette to Elmhurst," said Margaret, with
preternatural calmness. "Philip is ill--with scarlet fever."
"Scarlet fever!" Mrs. Pennybacker's searching eyes were upon Mr. De
Jarnette. "How--in the world--could he have been exposed to scarlet
fever?"
"Probably the day of the egg-rolling," Margaret again answered for him.
"I leave everything with you. I shall be there indefinitely."
"But Margaret, child, you ought not to go alone. I feel that I ought to
go with you. And yet I don't see how I can leave Rosalie. She is in that
condition that it is impossible to tell when the end will come. She may
linger for weeks and it may come at any moment."
"You can't go," said Margaret. "And Bess cannot go, for she is too much
of a child herself."
"And besides she has never had scarlet fever."
"No. There's nothing for me to do but to go alone."
"The nurse will be there," suggested Mr. De Jarnette.
"Oh, the _nurse_!" said Mrs. Pennybacker.
"Aunt Mary--if--" she grew white and shut her lips.
"If the worst comes, Margaret, let me know, and I will go to you, no
matter what happens here," said Mrs. Pennybacker, hastily. "But keep up
a good courage, my child, and trust in God. 'His arm is not shortened
that it cannot save, nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear.'"
Mr. De Jarnette stepped into the hall. He knew instinctively that
Margaret would not want him here now.
When they were in the carriage and Mrs. Pennybacker standing beside it,
he turned to Margaret.
"I forgot to say that I called Dr. Semple for Philip. If there is any
one else you would rather have I should be glad to make the change."
Margaret looked disturbed.
"I should not want Dr. Semple. He is too young. And besides--" She might
have said, "I do not like him or feel easy in his presence," for all
this was true, but she finished the sentence--"And besides, I would
rather have Dr. Anderson, our own physician."
Mr. De Jarnette tucked the robe around Margaret and turned to Mrs.
Pennybacker.
"Will you telephone Dr. Anderson to come out by the five o'clock train?
The carriage will be at the station to meet him. Ask him to come
prepared to spend the night if necessary.... No, not in consultation--to
take charge of the case. I will make it right with Semple."
They were soon out of the city and on the country road leading to
Elmhurst. "Drive fast, Rogers," Margaret had said as they started.
They made no pretence of keeping up conversation. They were together
only for the understood purpose of getting to the child as quickly as
possible. After the first few questions and answers they had lapsed into
a silence which neither felt inclined to break. Both were busy with
their thoughts. Once Margaret, groping blindly for possible causes,
said, "You don't know of any way in which he could have been exposed?"
"I--I think it must have been the day after--of the egg-rolling," he
said. "Probably after he left you."
"And Mammy Cely promised so faithfully to look after him," she said
reproachfully.
"I really think," said Mr. De Jarnette, hesitatingly--he would have
given a good slice of his inheritance to have been able to lay the blame
upon Mammy Cely, but remembering her insistent faithfulness, and goaded
by his conscience, he could not do other than to tell her the
truth,--"that if Philip was exposed that day I am the one to blame."
Margaret was looking at him with a fixed attention which compelled
explanation.
"I--I took him with me, against her remonstrances, I feel obliged in
common justice to say, to a house where I had business. He begged to go
and I could see no reason why he should not. But as it turned out it was
most unfortunate. I have reason to think that there was a child in the
house recovering from scarlet fever, and in just the condition, Semple
tells me, to communicate it."
"And there was no card?" she asked in wonder.
He hesitated. "They tell me there was a card. But I will have to
acknowledge that I did not see it."
"You took Philip--in spite of Mammy Cely's remonstrances--into a house
infected with a deadly disease," she said slowly, "and failed to see the
most obvious of warnings."
"Say all you want to say," he answered miserably. "You cannot blame me
more than I have blamed myself."
Six months before she would have taken him at his word, but a sudden
sense of the futility of words smote her. Perhaps, too, even in that
trying moment the wretchedness of his face touched her.
"Recriminations are worse than useless," she said at last. "I have found
that out. There have been enough of them between us. In God's name, let
us work together for once and try to save him."
"You are more than generous," he said after a long pause.
How much more quickly does thought travel than foot of beast. Margaret's
was leaping forward with lightning rapidity. She was at Philip's side;
saw him gasping, dying in her arms; stood beside his casket looking down
upon the face that she would see no more; saw a solitary woman's figure
sitting by a little grave saying "This is the end." Then it seemed as if
she heard an unknown voice saying, "This was a quarrel that God alone
could settle, and he has done it in his own way."
She drew a quick breath then, almost like a child's gasping sob. Oh,
anything but that! Anything! Let him but live! The wheels moved, turned
on monotonously, she watching them.... Nothing could be so bitter and so
hopeless as death. _Nothing!_ A Bible story that she had heard Mrs.
Pennybacker read one day in Rosalie's room came suddenly without reason
into her mind. It was about the two women who claimed the one child,
each saying, "This is my son that liveth, and thy son is the dead." It
had seemed to her a cruel test that Solomon the Wise had put them to
when he said, "Bring me a sword," and then, "Divide the living child in
two and give half to the one and half to the other." And while the false
claimant said, "Yea, let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it;"
surely it was the true mother, the one whose the living child was that
cried out with yearning, "Oh, my lord, give her the living child and in
no wise slay it."... Oh, it was a true test! Anything but death!
_anything_ but death!
A shiver passed through her, and Richard De Jarnette leaning over tucked
the robe around her without speaking. Only once did he open his lips
after that. Then, as if urged by the impetus of some kindred fear, he
leaned forward and spoke to the coachman:
"Drive faster."
Mammy Cely met them at the door and took Margaret to her room, while Mr.
De Jarnette went directly to Philip. He was possessed of a wild fear
that the child might be dead when they got there. He wondered a little
at Margaret's delay. Why did she not go directly to him? He understood
it five minutes later when she came quietly in clothed in her sick-room
garb. This was no visit. She had come to stay. He marveled to see her
quiet contained manner. As she came in he moved instinctively toward the
door, feeling himself an intruder in his own house. There seemed almost
profanation in his witnessing the meeting between the two he had
separated. But he did not go soon enough to miss Philip's glad cry,
"Mama! oh, _mama_!" Nor Margaret's soothing answer, which was cheery as
well, "Yes, dearest. Mama's come to stay now. There!... there!... Mama
knows."
He closed the door softly behind him.
When Dr. Anderson and the night nurse got there Margaret was in control.
"I can hardly see any necessity for her staying," she said, when after
the doctor's examination she had followed him down to the library where
Richard was, for consultation. "With one thoroughly competent nurse to
direct things and see that everything is right I would rather not have
the other one around. I shall be with him all the time any way."
"With the second nurse here that will not be necessary," urged Mr. De
Jarnette. "It is desirable to have you here, but between them they can
do all the nursing and save you. That is why I got this second one."
"You have done all that money can do," Margaret said coldly, "but there
are some things money cannot do. One of them is to fill a mother's place
at a sick child's bed. I shall stay in Philip's room at night whether
they wish it or not. I shall not leave him to the nurses, and they may
as well understand it."
"I only meant to relieve her, if possible," explained Mr. De Jarnette to
the doctor when she was gone.
"You can't very well relieve a mother when her child is sick, Mr. De
Jarnette," the doctor said rather dryly. "It is in giving, not in saving
herself that she finds comfort. Let her have her own way."
So in a great arm-chair at Philip's side where he could see her if he
woke she lay and watched the hours away. It was Richard's big leather
covered chair that he had brought up for her when he found she would not
be persuaded. She could notice the odor of cigar smoke about it. The
taper burning dimly threw into relief against the shadows the little
white bed where lay the child, and beyond it the bookcase where his
unused books and playthings were. Even at that moment she noted
jealously how they were accumulating. The ghostly light showed her the
morning glories on the lattice and the humming birds that Philip loved,
and the sad eyes of the Bodenhausen.
The nurse, wisely provident against a time of waking, was dozing in her
chair.... How strange it was to be here in this house--the house of her
enemy--the man whose grip had been on her heart for five long years! She
had reason to hate him! How hard and unrelenting he had been! how
bitterly hard! And yet--
Going over the events of this day, one by one, she could not say that at
close range he had seemed other than a man of flesh and blood.