“The next day Cora was sick. She lay in bed, moaning in a feeble way,
her face very much flushed, her lips dry and parched. She was very ill,
they said, and the doctor was sent for. My first thought was that she
would die with her sin unrepented.
“So she lay in a kind of stupor for many days. There was silence, or
only whispers and soft steps over the house, and we neither laughed nor
played. It was very solemn and strange. Once, when the door was ajar, I
caught a glimpse in the darkened room of a hot face on the pillows, and
a shorn head bound with white bandages.
“And thus the time passed. Every morning I woke in a fright, thinking
the pale messenger had come in the night; and at each assurance, ‘She
still lives,’ my spirits rose, until night and gloom coming again, I
became sad and fearful. And then we wondered what death was, and it
seemed to our young lives very dreadful, and we sat pale and grieving
together over our many unkindnesses to Cora, thinking if she were only
well, only with us once more, that we could never be vexed with her
again.
“I had been sitting alone in the library, one afternoon, trying to
forget my pain in a book. The blinds were down, there was only a
glimmer of light here and there, and the gloom, the stillness, grew so
deep that I went out into the sunshine, looking for life to take my
thoughts from death.
“There was Cora’s pretty Italian greyhound, Fairy, on the piazza. She
put her pretty head into my hands, looking wistfully into my face, as
if asking for her mistress. I could not bear that. I went into the
garden. There was her flower bed, full of weeds, and the buds were
withering for want of water. I began to pluck out the weeds, working
zealously, glad to do something for her—and resolved to tend her
garden till she was well.
“The old white-haired gardener came near while I was thus employed. He
shook his head.
“‘Poor Miss Cora! I ’spect she won’t work no more in this garden.’
“He was an old man, bent and worn. To have seen the child’s and his
figure moving together about those walks a month ago, who would have
dreamed the lighter, younger form must lie low first?
“‘We’re in the Lord’s hands,’ said the old man, looking upward. ‘I did
not think her time would come first;’ and he hobbled on. I watched
him. It seemed strange to me to see him so content. Day after day, he
plodded on in the same dull routine. I never saw him without that same
sense of wondering pity. He did not read, he could not play, he worked,
worked from morning till night. What was life to him? I asked myself.
Presently he came limping back, he held something in his hand. ‘I got
this in the biggest bush of box. It is an apron, isn’t it?’
“Yes; it was Cora’s little silk apron, with the greasy spots from the
spilt cream on it. I took it into my hand with such a pain shooting
through my very heart, tears rushed to my eyes, and I could scarcely
stand. And the thought that she was now near the threshold of that
unseen world, where all must render an account of the deeds done in the
body, made me shudder with dismay.
“I did not know what to do. Words cannot describe my feelings of
self-reproach, the pain of knowing that _I_ had prevented her from
easing her conscience by confession. I went back to the house, carrying
the apron. Aunt Marion, in her white wrapper, passed quickly along the
hall, with ice on a plate for the sick-room, too anxious to think of
any one but her suffering child.
“While I was still standing there, she returned. Tears were on her
cheeks. She came to me and clasped me in her arms, sobbing. ‘I cannot
bear it—it seems too hard,’ she said. Seeing what I held in my hand,
the weeping was renewed.
“‘Where did you find her apron—poor, dear Cora?’ she asked, after a
while, touching it tenderly, almost reverently, as we do the veriest
trifle belonging to the dead.
“‘Baines found it in the garden, Auntie,’ I answered, looking down. The
opportunity was near for making my confession.
“‘In the garden? How could it have come there?’ said Auntie, still
smoothing out the creases with her gentle fingers, the tears dropping
all the while.
“I did not answer. Aunt Marion looked up at my silence, she saw my
tears, my pale cheeks, my down-cast looks. ‘Do you know any thing about
it, Mary?’ she asked.
“‘Yes. Cora put it there,’ I said, ‘in the box-wood—the day of the
pic-nic;’ and then, with tears and broken words, I told her all. She
listened without saying a word; but it was painful to see the mother’s
face, flushing, paling, full of pain. She rang for Ricy, who came in a
moment or two.
“‘Did you give Miss Cora cream the day the children had their pic-nic,
Ricy? I sent her for some in the morning,’ said Auntie.
“‘Yes, ’pears like I did,’ answered Ricy, meditating. ‘Yes, Missis, I
did; bressed lamb! and she had that bery apurn on, ’cause I thought
she’d spill de cream on’t, an’ tole her so. Laws, ’taint no countin’ on
life dese yer days; to see her then, so peart, and now——,’ and Ricy,
at a gesture from my aunt, went away in tears.
“‘If she had only told me of it—if she had only said one word of
sorrow for her faults,—one word,—it would not have seemed so hard,’
moaned Auntie, rocking herself to and fro.
“‘Oh! Auntie, I think she meant to tell you—she talked about it in
her sleep, she was troubled, she did not seem the same afterwards:
but—but—’ and then I faltered out my own share in the guilt, and told
her of Cora’s hesitation, and of my fear that we should be late, and
of offering to tell about the cream while Cora ran for her bonnet,
being afraid she would confess and so delay us.
“My gentle aunt’s look of displeasure, her repellent gesture and cold
words: ‘I must go to my child and leave you to your thoughts; they
cannot be pleasant ones,’ were bitter indeed to bear. Surely my sin had
found me out.
“So she went up stairs again, and left me in my grief alone. It seemed
as if the sun never could shine again—that a great black cloud had
shut out my sky, and there was nothing but despair in the world. And
so I lay there, too sad to weep, only choking and sobbing, till Willie
came and carried me into his own cool room, and with gentle words
soothed me, till I had poured out my grief to him and so lightened the
burden.
“He told me I must not mourn so, and showed me that I must not follow
my own will even in this, since it was that self-will which caused all
my troubles. In his beautiful way, he told me where the wrong lay,
and pointed to the one safe path for avoiding pitfalls and thickets,
and before the hour was spent, stilled even my cries at the thought of
Cora’s dying—saying, ‘God’s will must be our will, and we dare not
murmur.’
“Willie himself sat by my bedside till I went to sleep, and he it was
that brought Aunt Marion to kiss me before I closed my eyes. It was
a very tender kiss, for anger and bitter feeling melt away in the
presence of death, and her heart was stirred too deeply to wish to
inflict pain on one already suffering.
“Daylight was streaming into my room when I opened my eyes. I heard the
birds singing, the doves cooing, and busy sounds of life everywhere.
I dressed myself, and the cheerful light drove away the sadness of
the day before. Surely one need not fear under such a sky and such a
sunshine.
“I opened my door and glided noiselessly down stairs. I passed Aunt
Marion’s door. Grandmamma was kneeling by the bed, and Uncle Bell
stood at the window with his back towards me. Fairy was whining at
the door of the sick room. The front door was open; there came in
a fresh smell of pure air and new hay from outside, and I heard a
laugh from the lawn. A face—one, two, three, Nellie’s, Robbie’s,
Willie’s—appeared. There were smiles and tears both on them, and
in joyful tones, they poured into my ear the good tidings, ‘Cora is
better.’
“So she was. In a week we gathered about her as she reclined in her
chair, pale and quiet, and we brought her June roses, June cherries,
and young, downy June chickens to inspect—enchanted at winning a
smile, and ready to run at her slightest bidding.
“But the lesson taught me through pain and suspense lasted all the time
of my stay there; and patience and self-denial, with a whole train of
good feelings, came out of Cora’s illness and suffering.
“She, too, was changed. When winter came, and I went to
boarding-school, we bade each other good-bye with real sorrow, and we
have continued friends all the years of our life.
“I think neither of us will ever forget the spilt cream, the picnic,
and the little silk apron.”