How weird the place looked, how gaunt and bare the great oak-trees
looked, looming up darkly against the moonlit sky! The dead leaves
rustled across her path as she crept around to the rear door.
She looked up at her mother's window, and another great chill crept
over her. All was dark there. It had always been her mother's custom
to place her lamp on the broad window-sill at night. Many a time it
had been her beacon-light in cutting across lots from the station on
evenings when she had been detained by her work. How strange it was
that the light was not in the window to-night!
"Mother is not expecting me to-night," she said to herself, "that is
the reason it is not there."
But ah, how she missed it! How her heart had yearned to behold it, with
a yearning so great that it had been the most intense pain. She lifted
the latch and entered tremblingly, hesitatingly. It had been over two
months since her mother had heard from her. How had her patient,
suffering mother lived through it?
As she crossed the hall she heard the sound of Mrs. Deering's voice in
a sharp, high key. Perhaps the horrible nephew was with her. She paused
in a paroxysm of terror. She was talking to her husband, scolding him,
rather.
"It isn't _my_ fault that we lost the fortune," he was answering her
meekly. "You brought your nephew out of the asylum too soon. You knew
he would not be here a fortnight before he would do some terrible
deed--burn the house down over our heads, or kill himself when the
attendant was not watching, or some other horrible deed of that kind.
When he did succeed in mutilating himself before any of us was aware
of it, instead of sending him back to the asylum, to be cared for, you
kept him here under lock and key thinking to cure him yourself in a
couple of months or so."
"Ah!" thought Ida May, leaning faint and dizzy against the wall, "now
I understand why Mrs. Deering consented to let me go away. Anything to
get me out of the house while she was curing the insane nephew whom she
had vowed I must wed."
The next words, while they shocked her inexpressively, lifted a world
of woe from her heart.
"Well, despite our watchfulness, he succeeded in killing himself at
last; so there's the end of it. The fortune is lost, and there's no use
in raving over it, and in venting your bitter wrath upon everything and
every one that comes within your range."
Mrs. Deering's anger was so great that she could not utter a word. She
flung open the door and dashed into the hall. The very first object
that met her gaze was the cowering little figure leaning against the
balustrade.
"You!" she cried, quite as soon as she could catch her breath. "How
dare you come here, Ida May, you wicked girl! I am amazed that you have
the effrontery to face honest people after what you have done! We read
all about it in the newspapers--how you ran away from Newport with a
gay, dashing fellow who soon after deserted you. Don't attempt to tell
me anything about it. I won't listen to a word. Get out of this house
as quick as you can! Go, before I bid the servants throw you from the
house!"
"But my mother! Surely you will let me see my mother!" sobbed the
girl, piteously. "The whole wide world may be against me, but she will
believe me guiltless! _Please_ let me see her."
A laugh that was horrible to hear broke from Mrs. Deering's thin lips.
"Your mother!" she sneered; "much you cared about her, or how your
doings affected her. That article in the newspapers did the work, as
you might have known it would. I carried the paper to her myself, and
when she read it she fell to the floor with a bitter cry, and she never
spoke again. It was her death-warrant!"
For one moment the girl looked at the woman with frightened eyes, as
though she could not quite comprehend the full import of what the woman
was saying.
"It killed your mother!" she repeated pitilessly. "You might have known
it would. She died of a broken heart!"
A long, low moan came from the girl's lips. The awful despair in the
dark eyes would have touched any other heart, even though it were made
of stone; but in Mrs. Deering's heart there was neither pity nor mercy.
"Go!" she repeated, threateningly, "and do not dare to ever darken my
door again!"
"Will you tell me where you have buried my poor mother?" moaned Ida
May, with bitter anguish.
"In the lot where the poor of the village are put," she answered,
unfeelingly. "We had to have a mark put over her. You can easily find
it. It's to the left-hand corner, the last one on the row. It would be
better for you, you shameless girl, if you were lying beside her rather
than sink to the lowest depths of the road you are traveling. Go--go at
once!"
With trembling feet she crept down the broad path and out of the gate.
She was drenched to the skin, and the chill October winds pierced
through her thin wet clothes like the sharp cut of a knife. It did not
matter much; nothing mattered for her any more. She was going to find
her mother's grave, kneel down beside it, lay her tired head on the
little green mound, and wait there for death to come to her, for surely
God would grant her prayer and in pity reach out His hand to her and
take her home. There would be a home _there_ where her mother was, even
if all other doors were closed to her.
She had little difficulty in finding the place--a small inclosure in
the rear of the old church that had fallen into decay and crumbling
ruins many years ago--and by the blinding flashes of lightning, she
found the grave of her mother--her poor, suffering mother, the only
being who had ever loved her in the great, cold, desolate earth.
"Mother," she sobbed, laying her face on the cold, wet leaves that
covered the mound, "mother, I have come to you to die. The world has
gone all wrong with me. I never meant to go wrong. I do not know how it
happened. Other young girls have married the lovers whom they thought
God had sent to them, and lived happy enough lives. I built such
glorious air-castles of the home I should have, the handsome, strong
young husband to love and to labor for me, and how you should live with
me, mother, never having to work any more. But oh, mother, all my plans
went wrong! I don't know why."
Ida May crouched there among the sleeping dead, her brain in a whirl;
and the long night wore on. The storm subsided, the wind died away over
the tossing trees and the far-off hills, and the rain ceased. Morning
broke faint and gray in the eastern sky, and the flecks of crimson
along the horizon presaged a bright and gladsome day.
The station-agent, hurrying along to his duties at that early hour,
was startled to see a dark figure lying among the graves. In a moment
he was bending over the prostrate form. He could not distinguish in
the dim light whose grave it was upon which the poor creature was
lying, but as he lifted the slender figure, and the faint, early light
fell upon the white, beautiful young face, he started back with an
exclamation of horror.
"Great God! it is little Ida May!"
For an instant he was incapable of action, his surprise was so intense.
"Dead!" he muttered, cold drops of perspiration standing out like beads
on his perturbed brow. "Little Ida May dead on her mother's grave!
God, how pitiful! She was so young to die!"
Then he knelt down beside her in the thick, wet grass, and placed his
hand over her heart in the wild hope that a spark of life might yet be
there.