The sun was almost setting, but its low light came in at the western
windows, and lit up a pale face lying upon the pillows, till it seemed
to the watchers beside the bed as if some glory from heaven had already
touched the brow of the dying. These watchers were only two,--a girl of
fourteen, rather tall of her age, with gray eyes that were almost green
sometimes, and dark hair, short like a boy’s, and curling all over her
head; and a middle-aged woman, who had tended this girl when a baby,
and was half friend, half servant, to the dying mother.
Mrs. Ash had been lying all the day, almost in silence. Her husband had
brought her, a year before, to California, because she was stricken
with consumption, and he hoped the change from the harsh east winds of
New England to the balmy airs of the Pacific coast might restore her
to health.
For a time the result had seemed to fulfil his hope; but, very
suddenly, he himself had been taken ill and died; and then the
half-baffled disease seized again on the mourning wife, who had now no
strength to repel its onset.
I think she would fain have lived--even then, when all the joy seemed
gone from her life--for her daughter Helen’s sake; but she was too weak
to struggle, and so she lay there dying, quite aware of what was before
her.
All day she had seemed to be thinking, thinking, and waiting till she
had settled something in her own mind before she spoke. At last, with
the sunset light upon her face, she beckoned to the woman, who bent
nearer.
“As soon as all is over, Woods,” she said, as tranquilly as if she
were speaking of the most ordinary household arrangement, “you will
take Helen to my sister’s in Boston. You must make the journey by easy
stages, so as not to tire her too much. Fortunately she will not be
dependent. She has money enough, and she needs only care and love,
which my sister will give her, I know well.
“I shall be glad if you can stay with her; but that must of course be
as Mrs. Mason will arrange. You will find when my affairs are settled
that you have been remembered. You will lay me by my husband’s side,
and then take Helen away.
“All is arranged so that there can be no trouble, and now, if you
please, leave me a little while with my daughter.”
The woman went out of the room, and then Mrs. Ash opened her arms, and
Helen crept into them and lay there silently, as if she were a baby
again whom her mother comforted.
She was a strange compound, this Helen Ash, of impulsiveness and
self-control. She had an intense nature, and her temptations would grow
chiefly out of her tendency to concentrate all her heart on a single
object,--to seek whatever thing she wished for with an insistence which
would not be denied.
This quality has its great advantages certainly, but it has its extreme
dangers.
Helen had no brothers or sisters or special friends. She had loved only
her father and mother, but she had loved them with an almost excessive
devotion.
When her father died she had borne up bravely, that she might comfort
and help her mother, and now she was bearing up still, that she might
not sadden that parting soul with the anguish of her own.
As she lay there in her mother’s arms, her eyes were wide open and
tearless, but they were full of a desperate gloom sadder than tears.
She was almost as pale herself as was her mother.
“Darling,” the mother said tenderly, “how can I bear to leave you all
alone? Promise me one thing only, to open your heart to new love. It
would be so like you to shut yourself up in your grief, and to fancy
you were loving me less if you let yourself care for your Aunt Helen.
“She will love you for my sake, and she must be your second mother now.
We were dearer than most sisters to each other, and she is a wise and
good woman.
“Her daughter, my namesake Laura, is just about your own age, and being
her mother’s daughter, she must be worth loving. Try to care for them,
my darling. The life which has no love in it is empty indeed. Will you
try?”
“O mamma,” the girl cried, with a sudden, desperate sob, “I _will_ try
because you bid me! I _will_ try; but oh, how _can_ I love them? How
_can_ I bear to see another girl happy with her mother, and to know
that you will never be with me any more--never in all the world? If I
call all day and all night, you will never hear nor answer! O my own
mother, _must_ you leave me?”
“My darling, yes. I would have lived for your sake if I could. You have
been my comfort always. Comfort me a little longer. Let me feel that in
all the future you will try to live nobly for my sake.”
The last words had been spoken with an evident effort, and it seemed to
Helen that the cheek against which her own rested was already colder
than it was half an hour ago.
She clung closer to the poor wasted form that was her whole world of
love, and closed her lips over the bitter cry that was rising to them;
and so the two lay, very, very quietly in that last embrace they were
ever to know.
And the twilight gathered round them, and at last a young moon, hanging
low in the western sky, looked in and touched with its pale glory the
pale faces on the pillow.
The mother stirred a little, and with a last effort clasped her child
closer, and said, in a voice like a sigh, faint and sweet and strange,
“Good-by, darling!” and then she seemed to sleep.
Perhaps Helen slept, also. She never quite knew; but it was an hour
afterwards when Woods touched her shoulder, and said, with a kind
firmness in her tone,--
“You _must_ get up now, Miss Helen, and leave her to me. She went off
just as quiet as a lamb, poor dear, and if ever a face was peaceful and
happy, hers is now.”
No one knew what the few days that followed were to Helen Ash. She shut
her lips, as her manner was, over her grief. She turned away, with her
great tearless eyes, from the two graves where her father and mother
lay side by side, and she helped, with a strange unnatural calmness, in
all the preparations for the long journey she was to take.
When at last she reached her aunt’s home in Boston, this strained,
unnatural composure gave way a little.
Her Aunt Helen looked so much like her mother that at first she thought
she could _not_ bear it. Then, when her aunt’s arms closed round her
almost as tenderly as her mother’s would have done, she shivered
a little, and burst into one wild passion of tears, which almost
instantly she checked.
“I am to love you for _her_ sake,” she said. “Those were almost her
last words; and indeed, indeed, I will try, but I think I left my heart
all those miles away in her grave.”
Mrs. Mason was, as her sister had said, a wise and good woman,--wise
enough not to attempt to force the love or the interest of her niece.
She contented herself with being exquisitely gentle and considerate
towards her, and with trying, in countless little ways, to make her
feel that she was at home.
Laura Mason had looked forward to Helen’s coming with a feeling that at
last she was to find in her the sister she had longed for all her life,
but Helen’s cold and self-contained manner disappointed her. She felt
the atmosphere of Helen’s reserve almost as tangibly as if her orphan
cousin had pushed her away.
The summer months passed, and scarcely brought them any nearer
together. Try as Helen might, she could not get over the sting of pain
when she saw this other girl happy in her mother’s love, or running
gayly to meet her father when he came home at night. _They_ had each
other, she used to say to herself, but _she_ had only her dead. She had
not even Woods to speak to, for Mrs. Mason had decided not to retain
her; and since there was no one to whom Helen ever spoke of the past,
she pondered it all the more in her heart.
Things were a little better when school commenced in the autumn. Helen
and Laura were in the same classes, and that brought them somewhat
more together; still there was no real intimacy between them.
In the spring there was to be a competitive examination, and a medal
was to be bestowed on the leading scholar in the class. By midwinter
it was quite evident that Helen and Laura led all the rest, and a real
spirit of rivalry grew up between the cousins which bade fair to become
a passion.
Mrs. Mason looked on regretfully, adhering to her difficult policy of
non-interference. One day Helen heard Laura say to her mother,--
“Mamsie, dear, you know you have the key to that French method locked
up in your desk, for you taught us from it last summer. Won’t you be a
dear, and lend it to me for a little while?
“If I only could have that to help me, I should be sure of success.
I would study just as hard. It would only be the difference between
knowing when one was right, and floundering on in an awful uncertainty.”
Helen was behind the curtain of the library window, and evidently they
did not know of her presence. She waited for her aunt’s answer. If
Laura had the key, then, indeed, she would be sure of success.
Mrs. Mason spoke in a sad voice, with a subtile little thrill of
reproach in it.
“I did not think you would so much as wish, my dear, to do any thing
that was not quite open and straightforward. You know Mademoiselle does
not expect you to see the key. The very test of your power is that you
should work without its aid, and the examination will prove how far you
have succeeded.”
“I suppose there’s no use in coaxing, when you say that. I do wish you
weren’t such an uncoaxable mamma.”
“No, you don’t,--you only fancy that you wish it; but, in your inmost
soul, you would rather have me as I am,” Mrs. Mason answered; and Helen
heard the sound of a kiss, and felt, for the thousandth time, how
bitter it was that this other girl should have home and mother, while
she had only a far-off grave.
But, at least, she would triumph in this school contest! If Laura came
off best there, it would be more than she _could_ bear.
The weeks passed on, and the spring came. The deep old garden back
of the house--the garden Helen’s mother had played in when she was a
child--grew full of bird-songs and blossoms.
There was a sweet laughter on the face of nature. The springs bubbled
with it; the flowers opened to the light; the sunshine poured down its
tender warmth, and the soft coo and call of the birds gave voice to the
general joy.
But both Laura and Helen were too eager and too tired to be gay. They
only studied. They went to sleep with books under their pillows; they
woke with the first light, and began to study again.
It was the very week of the examination, at last. Helen felt satisfied
with herself in all but her French. If _she_ could only have that key
for one little half-hour, she knew she would have no weak spot in her
armor.
She brooded over the idea until the temptation possessed her like an
evil fate. In her passionate girl’s heart she said to herself that she
wanted to _die_ if Laura triumphed over her at school. Laura had every
thing else; why _should_ she have that, also?
She had said at first, “If only it were _right_ to have the key!” Then
she said, “if only she could _chance_ on the key, somehow!” Then, “if
only she could get at her aunt’s desk and _find_ the key!” At last it
was,--
“I _will_ get at the key, somehow!”
This last was the very morning before the examination. She rose from
her bed in the dainty blue-hung room her aunt had taken such pains to
make pretty for her, and went softly downstairs, in the young spring
morning.
Her bare feet made no sound on the thick stair-carpet. She looked like
a little white-clad ghost that had forgotten to flee away at the first
cock-crowing, as an orthodox ghost ought; but no ghost ever had such
glowing cheeks, crimson with excitement, such great wide-opened gray
eyes with green depths in them.
She held in her hand a large bunch of keys belonging to her mother. It
was just a chance whether one of them would fit her aunt’s desk.
She fairly trembled with excitement. She had lost all thought of the
wrong she was doing--of the shame and meanness of this act, which must
be done in silence and mystery; she thought only of the triumph which
success would mean.
She stood before the desk, and tried key after key with her shaking
fingers.
At last one fitted. In a moment more the key to the French method was
in her hand.
In desperate haste she compared her own work with it, and made
corrections here and there.
She was so absorbed that she quite failed to see another white-clad
figure which had followed her noiselessly down the stairs, and stood in
the doorway long enough to see what she was doing, and then went away.
Hurriedly Helen went through her evil task, and then stole back to bed,
with her glittering eyes and burning cheeks.
Meantime Laura had gone, full of excitement, to her mother. Mr. Mason
was away on business, and Laura crept into the empty half of her
mother’s great bed.
“Mamsie,” she said, “wake up quickly, and listen.”
Patient Mrs. Mason rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and turned over.
Then followed Laura’s breathless story.
“Of course she’ll win, now,” Laura said, in conclusion, “unless I tell
Mademoiselle what she has done; and I suppose you wouldn’t like that,
would you, mamsie?
“But it was her French that was the shakiest of any thing. Oh, _did_
you ever see any thing quite so mean? Think of getting into your desk
with her keys, and then slying off all those corrections!”
“Yes, I _do_ think,” Mrs. Mason answered, with almost a groan.
“And she is Laura’s child--my poor Laura, who was honor and honesty
itself!
“You don’t know, dear, what a bitter thing this is to me. Poor Laura!
what if she knows?”
“But what shall we do, mamsie, dear? Are we just to keep still, and let
her win the medal, and let every one think she has beaten fairly, or
will you tell her what we know?”
“Will you go away now,” Mrs. Mason said, “and come back again before
breakfast? I don’t want to say any thing until I am quite sure what it
is best to do.”
When Laura came again, Mrs. Mason had settled upon her course of
action, or rather of inaction.
“Don’t be vexed, girlie,” she said to Laura; “I know it will seem hard
to you to be beaten unfairly; but there are things of more consequence
even than that. The thing that seems to me most important, just now,
is to know what Helen’s character really is. If she is not utterly
unworthy of her mother, she will repent before the thing comes to an
end. If she does not, it will be time enough to think what to do next.”
“And I must let her beat unfairly, and never say one word?” Laura
asked, with a little strain of rebellion in her voice.
“Yes, if you are the obedient and generous Laura I like to believe
you.”
“Mamsie, you have a flattering tongue, and you always get your way.”
“And who is pretty sure always to admit, in the end, that it was the
best way?” asked Mrs. Mason, laughing.
“Mamsie, you are getting spoiled. See if I say yours was the best way
this time!”
French came on the first of the two examination-days. Laura and Helen
led their class. Laura did very well, but Helen acquitted herself
triumphantly, and sat down amid a little buzz of congratulations and
praises.
But somehow the triumph left a bitter taste in her mouth. She did not
look at Laura, and even if she had she would not have understood the
scorn on Laura’s face, since she was quite unaware that her raid on her
aunt’s desk had been observed.
Still she was not happy. She needed no scorn from outside, she had
already begun to feel such bitterness of self-contempt scorching her
soul. It seemed to her that up to this moment she had been as one under
an evil spell.
She had thought of no single thing except her triumph over her
cousin--quite careless as to the means to this hotly desired end. Now
she began to realize how base those means had been, and to long to
exchange her success for any direst possible failure.
Mrs. Mason was watching her, and when they started to go home, she
found an instant in which to whisper to Laura,--
“Be gentle to her, girlie; she will suffer enough to-night.”
At supper Helen’s place was vacant. She sent word that her head ached
too much to come.
Her aunt despatched to her room tea and strawberries and
bread-and-butter enough for the hungriest of girls, and then left her
to herself.
The poor, lonesome, miserable girl lay upon her bed and thought. It was
not quite a year since she had lain in her mother’s arms and heard her
say,--
“Try to live nobly for my sake.”
Those had been almost her mother’s last words; after them there was
only the low sigh, faint as if it came already from far-off worlds,--
“Good-by, darling.”
The low sun-rays stole in softly, and touched her sad, pale face, and
then went away; and after a while some cold, far-off stars looked down
into the window, and saw the girl lying there still, fighting her
battle with herself.
One thing her conscience told her,--that she must undo this wrong, at
whatever cost of shame.
Once she started up, half-resolved to go to her aunt and tell her the
whole story, and seek her help and counsel. But she lay down again,
without the courage to confess her shame.
Through the long night she scarcely slept; but before morning she
had resolved what to do. In public she had taken the wages of her
sin; in public she would make atonement, and eat the bitter bread of
humiliation.
When she had once settled on her course of action, sleep touched her
weary eyes, and soothed her into a forgetfulness from which only the
breakfast-bell awoke her.
That day every one noticed a singular calmness and resolve in her
manner. She passed the remaining examinations with thorough success,
yet with an evident lack of interest in their result which all save her
aunt were at a loss to understand.
At last the time came for the awarding of the medal. There was a little
consultation among the examining committee, and then their chairman
rose, with the medal in his hand.
“To Miss Helen Ash,” he began; but before he could proceed farther,
Miss Helen Ash herself interrupted him.
Her face was as white as the dress she wore, and her eyes glittered
with some strange fire of resolve or courage; but her voice was
absolutely without a quiver of emotion in it, as steady and even as if
she were beyond hope or fear.
“The medal does not belong to me,” she said. “My success was a
false success. I dishonestly found the key to the French method,
and corrected my mistakes by it, or I should have failed. The prize
belongs, of right, to my cousin, Laura Mason.”
The chairman was a fussy little man, and was thoroughly discomposed
by this interruption. He had had his little speech all ready, but it
began with the name of Helen Ash, and he found it difficult to change
it at a moment’s notice.
“Bless my heart!” he said quite unconsciously, and looking helplessly
around him, he repeated, “_Bless_ my heart!”
“Miss Laura Mason,” suggested one of his brethren on the committee; and
thus reinforced, he began again,--
“Miss Laura Mason, I am very sorry--I mean I am very glad, to bestow on
you this medal, which you have fairly earned by your success.”
And then he sat down, and his confusion was covered by a gentle little
clapping of hands.
That night Mrs. Mason went to Helen in her own room, when the twilight
shadows were falling, and as she entered the door she said, “My
darling,” in a voice so like Helen’s mother’s that the girl’s very
heart sprang to meet it.
“My darling, I know now that you are true enough and brave enough to be
my sister’s child.”
But Helen shrank back into the darkness, and this time the voice was
broken with tears which faltered,--
“Is there any one who could know what I have done, and yet not despise
me?”
“There is no one, dear, who dares to scorn the soul that repents and
atones.”
And then loving arms held the poor lonesome girl close, and she knew
that she was no longer alone. She had found a new home--the home her
mother bade her seek--in the heart of that mother’s sister.