returned, affably, resuming his own seat, "for me to be one of the first
to welcome to her new home the wife of an old friend. There is no man in
all my congregation for whom I have a higher regard than I have for John
Blackstock."
The young wife did not quite like to have her husband patronized even by
the minister of his church, but smiled sweetly as she replied, "It is so
kind of you to say that--and I am sure that there is no one whose
friendship John values more than he does yours, Doctor."
The minister continued gravely, as though putting this compliment aside.
"Yes, I think I have a right to call your husband an old friend. He
joined my church only a few months after I was called to New York, and
that is nearly fifteen years ago--a large part of a man's life. I have
observed him under circumstances of unusual trial, and I can bear
witness that he is made of sterling stuff. I was with him when he had to
call upon all his fortitude to bear what is perhaps the hardest blow
any man is required to submit to--the unexpected loss of the beloved
companion of his youth."
Dr. Thurston paused here; and the bride did not know just what to say.
She could not see why the minister should find it necessary to talk to
her of the dead woman, who had been in her thoughts all the afternoon.
"Perhaps it may seem strange to you, Mrs. Blackstock," he went on, after
an awkward silence, "that I should at this first visit and at this
earliest opportunity of speech with you--that I should speak to you of
the saintly woman who was John Blackstock's first wife. I trust that you
will acquit me of any intention of offending you, and I beg that you
will believe that I have mentioned her only because I have a solemn duty
before me."
With wide-open eyes the bride sat still before him. She could not
understand what these words might mean. When her visitor paused for a
moment, all she could say was, "Certainly--certainly," and she would
have been greatly puzzled to explain just what it was she wished to
convey by the word. A vague apprehension thrilled her, for which she
could give no reason.
"I will be brief," the doctor began again. "Perhaps you are aware that
the late Mrs. Blackstock died of heart failure?"
The bride nodded and answered, "Yes, yes." She wanted to say "What of
it? And what have I to do with her now? She is dead and gone; and I am
alive. Why cannot she leave me alone?"
"But it may be you do not know," Dr. Thurston continued, "that she
herself was aware of the nature of her disease? She learned the fatal
truth two or three years before she died. She kept it a secret from her
husband, and to him she was always cheerful and hopeful. But she made
ready for death, not knowing when it might come, but feeling assured
that it could not long delay its call. She was a brave woman and a
devout Christian; and she could face the future fearlessly. Then, as
ever, her first thought was for her husband, and she grieved at leaving
him alone and lonely whom she had cared for so many years. If she were
to die soon her husband would not be an old man, and perhaps he might
take another wife. This suggestion was possibly repugnant to her at
first; but in time she became reconciled to it."
The bride was glad to hear this. Somehow this seemed a little to lighten
the gloom which had been settling down upon her.
"Then it was that the late Mrs. Blackstock, dwelling upon her husband's
second marriage, decided to write a letter to you," and as the minister
said this he took an envelope from his coat pocket.
"To me?" cried the young wife, springing to her feet, as though in
self-defense. Her first fear was that she was about to learn some dread
mystery.
"To you," Dr. Thurston answered calmly--"at least to the woman, whoever
she might be, whom John Blackstock should take to wife."
"Why--" began the bride, with a little hysteric laugh, "why, what could
she possibly have to say to me?" And her heart was chilled within her.
"That I cannot tell you," the minister answered; "she did not read the
letter to me. She brought it to me one dark day the winter before last;
and she besought me to take it and to say nothing about it to her
husband; and to hand it myself to John Blackstock's new wife whenever
they should return from their wedding trip and settle down in this
house."
Then Dr. Thurston rose to his feet and tendered her the envelope.
"You want me to read that?" the bride asked, in a hard voice, fearful
that the dead hand might be going to snatch at her young happiness.
"I have fulfilled my promise in delivering the letter to you," the
minister responded. "But if you ask my advice, I should certainly
recommend you to read it. The writer was a good woman, a saintly woman;
and whatever the message she has sent you from beyond the grave, as it
were, I think it would be well for you to read it."
The young wife took the envelope. "Very well," she answered, "since I
must read it, I will."
"I am conscious that this interview cannot but have been somewhat
painful to you, Mrs. Blackstock," said the minister, moving toward the
door. "Certainly the situation is strangely unconventional. But I trust
you will forgive me for my share in the matter--"
"Forgive you?" she rejoined, finding phrases with difficulty. "Oh
yes--yes, I forgive you, of course."
"Then I will bid you good afternoon," he returned.
"Good afternoon," she answered, automatically.
"I beg that you will give my regards to your husband."
"To my husband?" she repeated. "Of course, of course."
When Dr. Thurston had gone at last, the bride stood still in the center
of the drawing-room with the envelope gripped in her hand. Taking a long
breath, she tore it open with a single motion and took out the
half-dozen sheets that were folded within it. She turned it about and
shook it suspiciously, but nothing fell from it. This relieved her dread
a little, for she feared that there might be some inclosure--something
that she would be sorry to have seen.
With the letter in her hand at last, she hesitated no longer; she
unfolded it and began to read.
The ink was already faded a little, for the date was nearly two years
old. The handwriting was firm but girlishly old-fashioned; it was
perfectly legible, however. This is what the bride read:
"MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,--I must begin by begging your pardon for
writing you this letter. I hope you will forgive it as the strange
act of a foolish old woman who wants to tell you some of the things
her heart is full of.
"You do not know me--at least, I think it most likely you do not,
although I cannot be sure of this, for you may be one of the girls
I have seen growing up. And I do not know you for sure; but all the
same I have been thinking of you very often in the past few weeks.
I have thought about you so often that at last I have made up my
mind to write you this letter. When I first had the idea, I did not
want to, but now I have brooded over it so long that I simply must.
"I have been wondering how you will take it, but I can't help that
now. I have something to say, and I am going to say it. I have been
wondering, too, what you will be like. I suppose that you are
young, very young perhaps, for John has always been fond of young
people. You are a good woman, I am sure, for John could never have
anything to do with a woman who was not good. Young and good I feel
sure you will be; and that is all I know about you.
"I cannot even guess how you have been brought up or what your
principles are or your ideas of duty. I wish I could. I am very
old-fashioned myself, I find, and so very few young people nowadays
seem to have the same opinion about serious things that I have. I
wish I could be sure you were a sincere Christian. I wish I were
certain you held fast to the old ideas of duty and self-sacrifice
that have been the honor and the glory of the good women of the
past. But I have no right to expect that you will think about all
these things just as I do. And I know only too well how weak I am
myself and how neglectful I have been in improving my own
opportunities. The most I can do is to hope that you will do what I
have always tried to do ever since I married John--and long before,
too--and that is to make him happy and to watch over him.
"If you are very young perhaps you do not yet know that men are not
like us women; they need to be taken care of just like children. It
is a blessed privilege to be a mother, but a childless wife can at
least be a mother to her husband. That is what I have been trying
to do all these years. I have tried to watch over John as though he
were my only son. Perhaps if our little girl had lived to grow up I
might have seen a divided duty before me. But it pleased God to
take her to Himself when she was only a baby in arms, and He has
never given me another. Many a night I have lain awake with my arms
aching to clasp that little body again; but the Lord gave and the
Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord! So I have
had nothing to draw me away from my duty to John. If you have
children some day--and God grant that you may, for John's heart is
set on a boy--if you have children, don't let your love for them
draw you away from John. Remember that he was first in your love,
and see that he is last also. He will say nothing, for he is good
and generous; but he is quick to see neglect, and it would be
bitter if he were left alone in his old age.
"You will find out in time that he is very sensitive, for all he is
a man and does not complain all the time. So be cheerful always, as
it annoys him to see anybody in pain or suffering in any way. It is
a great comfort to me now that the disease that is going to take me
away from him sooner or later, I cannot know when--that it is
sudden and not disfiguring, and that he need not know anything at
all about it until it is all over. I have made the doctor promise
not to tell him till I am dead.
"You see, John has his worries down-town--not so many now as he
used to have, I am thankful to say; and I have tried always to make
his home bright for him so that he could forget unpleasant things.
I hope you will always do that, too; it is a wife's duty, I think.
You will forgive my telling you these things, won't you? You see I
am so much older than you are, and I have known John for so many
years. I have found that it relieves his feelings sometimes to tell
me his troubles and to talk over things with me. Of course, I don't
know much about business, and I suppose that what I say is of no
value; but it soothes him to have sympathy. So I hope you will
never be impatient when he wants to tell you about his partners and
the clerks and things of that sort. I have seen women foolish
enough not to want to listen when their husbands talked about
business. I do hope that you are wiser, or, at any rate, that you
will take advice from an old woman like me, thinking only of the
happiness of the man you have promised to love, honor, and obey.
You will learn in time how good John is. Perhaps you may think you
know now--but you can't know that as well as I do.
"You see I am older than John--not so much older, either, only a
little more than two years. He doesn't like me to admit it, but it
is true; and of late I have been afraid that everybody could see
it, for I am past forty now and I feel very old sometimes, while
John is as young as ever. He looks just as he did twenty years ago;
he has not a gray hair in his head yet. He comes up-stairs to me,
after he gets back from the office, with the same boyish step I
know so well.
"He was only a boy when I first saw him in the little village
school-house. His family had just moved into our neighborhood, and
the school he had been to before was not very good, and so I was
able to help him with his lessons. The memory of that first winter
when we were boy and girl together has always been very precious to
me; and I can see him now as he used to come into the school,
panting with his hard run to get there in time.
"I don't know when it was that I began to love him, but it was
long before he had grown to be a man. That early love of mine gave
me many a sorrowful hour in those days, for there were other girls
who saw how handsome John was. One girl there was he used to say
was pretty, but I never could see it, for she had red hair and
freckles--but perhaps John said this to tease me, for he was always
fond of a joke. This girl made up to him, and John came near
marrying her; but fortunately a new minister came to town and she
gave up John and took him. So John came back to me, and that spring
we were married.
"John was not rich then; he had his way to make, but when an old
family friend offered him a place in New York City he hesitated. He
did not want to take me away from my mother; he has always been so
good to me. But mother would not hear of it; and so we came to this
big city, and John succeeded from the very first. It was not ten
years before he was taken into the firm; and now for two years he
has been at the head of it. I doubt if there is another man as
young as he is in all New York at the head of so large a business.
"When we first came to New York we boarded; and then after a while
we found a little house in Grove Street. It was there baby was born
and there she died; and perhaps that is why I was so ungrateful as
to be sorry when John bought this big house here on Gramercy Park.
He said he wanted his wife to have as good a house as anybody
else. Of course, I ought to have known that a man of John's
prominence could not go on living in Grove Street; he had to take
his position in the world. He let me have my own way about
furnishing this house, although he did pretend to scold me for not
spending enough money. I have been very happy here, although I will
not say that I have never regretted the little house where my only
child died; but, of course, I never told this to John, and it has
always pleased me to see the pride he took in this handsome house.
And now in a few weeks or a few months I shall leave it forever,
and I leave him also.
"But I must not talk about myself any more. It is about John I
wanted to speak. I meant to tell you how good he is and how he
deserves to be loved with your whole heart. I intended to ask you
to take care of him as I have tried to do, to watch over him, to
comfort him, to sympathize with him, to be truly his helpmate.
[Illustration: SHE FLUNG HERSELF INTO HIS ARMS]
"Especially must you watch over him, for he will not take care of
himself. For instance, he is so busy all day that he will forget to
eat any luncheon unless you keep at him; and if he goes without his
lunch sometimes he has bad attacks of indigestion. And even when it
is raining he does not always think to take his overshoes or even
his umbrella; and he ought to be particular, because he is
threatened with rheumatism. If he has a cold, send for Dr.
Cheever at once, and John seems to catch cold very easily; once,
three years ago, he came near having pneumonia. You must see that
he changes his flannels early in the fall; he will never do it
unless you get them out for him. You will have to look after him as
if he were a baby; and that is one reason why I am writing this
long, long letter, just to tell you what you will have to do.
"Perhaps I had another reason, too--the joy I take always in
talking about him and in praising him and in telling how good he
is. I hope he has been happy with me all these years, and I know I
have been very happy with him. It may be very fanciful in me, but I
like the idea that these words of mine praising him will be read
after my death. If you love him, as I hope you do, with your whole
heart and soul, you will understand why I have written this and you
will forgive me.
"Yours sincerely,
"SARAH BLACKSTOCK."
Before the young bride had read the half of this unexpected
communication her eyes had filled with tears, and when she came to the
end her face was wet.
She stood silently in the center of the room where the minister had left
her, and she held the open sheets of the letter in her hand. Then the
front door was closed with a jar to be felt all over the house; and in
a moment she had heard her husband's footsteps in the hall.
"John!" she cried.
When he came to the door she flung herself into his arms, sobbing
helplessly.
"Oh, John," she managed to say, at last. "Your first wife was an angel!
I don't believe I can ever be as good as she was. But you will love me
too--won't you, dear?"
(1897)
[Illustration: The Shortest
Day in the Year]
The snow was still falling steadily, although it had already thickly
carpeted the avenue. It was a soft, gentle snow, sifting down calmly and
clinging moistly to the bare branches of the feeble trees, which stood
out starkly sheathed in white, spectral in the grayness of the late
afternoon. Gangs of men were clearing the cross-paths at the corners and
shoveling the sodden drifts into carts of various sizes, impressed into
sudden service. It was not yet dusk, but the street-lamps had been
lighted; and the tall hotel almost opposite was already illuminated here
and there by squares of yellow.
Elinor stood at the window of her aunt's house, gazing out, and yet not
seeing the occasional carriages and the frequent automobiles that filled
the broad avenue before her. The Christmas wreath that hung just over
her head was scarcely more motionless than she was, as she stared
straight before her, unconscious of anything but the deadness of her own
outlook on life.
She looked very handsome in her large hat and her black furs, which set
off the pallor of her face, relieved by the deep eyes, now a little
sunken, and with a dark line beneath them. She took no notice of the
laborers as they stood aside to allow her aunt's comfortable carriage to
draw up before the door. She did not observe the laughing children at an
upper window of the house exactly opposite, highly excited at the vision
of a huge Christmas tree which towered aloft in a cart before the door.
She was waiting for Aunt Cordelia to take her to a tea, and then to a
studio, where her portrait was to be shown to a few of her friends.
Her thoughts were not on any of these things; they were far away from
wintry New York. Her thoughts were centered on the new-made grave in
distant Panama, in which they had buried the man she loved less than a
week ago.
And it was just a year ago to-day, on the twenty-second of December, the
shortest day in the year, that she had promised to be his wife. Only a
year--and it seemed to her that those twelve months had made up most of
her life. What were the score of years that had gone before in
comparison with the richness of those happy twelve months, when life had
at last seemed worth while?
As a girl she had wondered sometimes what life was for, and why men and
women had been sent on this earth. What was the purpose of it all? But
this question had never arisen again since she had met him; or, rather,
it had been answered, once for all. Life was love; that was plain enough
to her. At last her life had taken on significance, since she had
yielded herself to his first kiss, and since the depth of her own
passion had been revealed to her swiftly and unexpectedly.
As she looked back at his unexpected appeal to her, and as she
remembered that when he had told her his love and asked her to be his
they had met only ten days before and had spoken to each other less than
half a dozen times, she realized that it was her fate which had brought
them together. Although she did not know it, she had been waiting for
him, as he had been waiting for her. She was his mate, and he was hers,
chosen out of all others--a choice foreordained through all eternity.
Their wooing was a precious secret, shared by no one else. They knew it
themselves, and that was enough; and perhaps the enforced mystery made
the compact all the sweeter. Ever since they had plighted their troth
she had gone about with joy in her heart and with her head in a heaven
of hope, hardly aware that she was touching the earth. All things were
glad around her; and a secret song of happiness was forever caroling in
her ears.
And yet she knew that it might be years before he could claim her, for
he was only now beginning his professional career as an engineer. He had
just been appointed to a good place on the canal. His chief was
encouraging, and put responsibilities on him; he had felt sure that he
would have a chance to show what he could do. And she had been almost
angry how any one could ever doubt that he would rise to the head of his
profession. She had told him that she would wait seven years, and twice
seven years, if need be.
Aunt Cordelia was hoping that she would make a splendid match. Within a
week after John Grant had said good-by she had rejected Reggie Eames,
whom her aunt had been encouraging for a year or two. She liked Reggie
well enough; he was a good fellow. When he had asked her if there was
another suitor standing in his way, she had looked him in the face and
told him that there was; and Reggie had taken it like a man, and had
made a point of being nice to her ever since, whenever they met in
society.
As she stood there at the window she gave a slight start and nodded
pleasantly to Reggie, who had bowed as he passed the house on the way to
the Union Club. And then the avenue, with all its passers-by, its
carriages and automobiles, its shoveling laborers and its falling snow,
its Christmas greens and its lighted windows, faded again from her
vision, as she tried to imagine that unseen grave far away in Panama.
She wished that she could have been with him--that they could have had
those last few hours together. She had had so little of him, after all.
An unexpected summons had come to him less than a week after they were
engaged; and he had gone at once. Of course, he had written by every
steamer, but what were letters when she was longing for the clasp of his
arms? And every month, on the twenty-second, there had come a bunch of
violets, with the single word "Sweetheart." He had laughed when he told
her that the twenty-second of December was the shortest day in the
year--which was not very promising if they expected to be "as happy as
the day is long"!
The months had gone, one after another; she had not seen him again; and
now she would never see him again. He had been hoping for leave of
absence early in the spring; and she had been looking forward to it. He
had written that he did not know how the work would get along without
him, but he did know that he could not get along without her. Hereafter
she would have to get along without him; and she had never longed for
him so much, wanted him, needed him.
The long years to come stretched out before her vision, as she stood
there in the window, lovely in her youthful beauty; and she knew that
for her they would be desolate, barren, and empty years. The flame of
love burned within her as fiercely as ever; but there was now nothing
for it to feed on but a memory; yet the fire was hot in its ashes.
She opened her heavy furs, for she felt as if they were stifling her.
She knew that they had been admired by her friends, and even envied by
some of them. Aunt Cordelia had given them to her for Christmas,
insisting on her wearing them as soon as they came home, since they were
so becoming.
Aunt Cordelia meant to be kind; she had always meant to be kind, ever
since Elinor had come to her as an orphan of ten. Her kindness was a
little exacting at times; and her narrow matrimonial ambitions Elinor
could not help despising. What did it profit a girl to make a splendid
match, if she did not marry the one man she was destined to love?
The furs were beautiful, and they were costly. Were they the price of
her freedom? Was it due to these expensive things she did not really
want that she had not been able to take John Grant for her husband a
month or a week after he had asked her?
Everything in this world had to be paid for; and perhaps she had sold
her liberty too cheap. If it had not been for the furs, and for all the
other things that her aunt had accustomed her to, she might have gone
with him to Panama and nursed him when he fell ill. She felt sure that
she could have saved him. She would have tried so hard! She would have
put her soul into it. Her soul? She felt as if the sorrow of the past
week had made her acquainted with her own soul for the first time. And
she confessed herself to be useless and feeble and weak.
That was what made it all so strange. Why could she not have died in his
place? Why could not she have died for him? She had lived, really lived,
only since she had known him; and it was only since he had gone that
she had known herself. She had meant to help him--not that he needed any
assistance from anybody. Now she could help no one in all the wide
world. She was useless again--a girl, ignorant and helpless.