"SISTER HONORA:--
"She's been gone three days. To the last we couldn't tell why
she fell ill. We only knew she made no effort to get well. I
am tormented by the fear that I had something to do with her
breaking like that. She was appalled--shattered--at the idea
of any friction between father and me. When I stood up for my
own ideas against his, it was to her as sacrilegious as if I
had lifted my hand against a king. I might have
capitulated--ought, I suppose, to have foregone everything!
"There is one thing, however, that gives me strange comfort.
At the last she had such dignity! Her silence seemed fine and
brave. She looked at us from a deep still peace as if, after
all her losing of the way, she had at last found it and
Herself. The search has carried her beyond our sight.
"Oh, we are so lonely, father and I. We silently accuse each
other. He thinks my reckless truth-telling destroyed her
timid spirit; I think his twenty-five years of tyranny did
it. We both know how she hated our rasping, and we hate it
ourselves. Yet, even at that hour when we stood beside her
bed and knew the end was coming, he and I were at sword's
points. What a hackneyed expression, but how terrible! Yes,
the hateful swords of our spirits, my point toward his breast
and his toward mine, gleamed there almost visibly above that
little tired creature. He wanted her for himself even to the
last: I wanted her for Truth--wanted her to walk up to God
dressed in her own soul-garments, not decked out in the rags
and tags of those father had tossed to her.
"She spoke only once. She had been dreaming, I suppose, and a
wonderful illuminated smile broke over her face. In the midst
of what seemed a sort of ecstasy, she looked up and saw
father watching her. She shivered away from him with one of
those apologetic gestures she so often used. 'It wasn't a
heavenly vision,' she said--she knew he wouldn't have
believed in that--'it was only that I thought my little brown
baby was in my arms.' She meant me, Honora,--think of it. She
had gone back to those tender days when I had been dependent
on her for all my well-being. My mummy! I gathered her close
and held her till she was gone, my little, strange,
frightened love.
"Now father and I hide our thoughts from each other. He
wanted to know if I was going to keep house for him. I said
I'd try, for six months. He flew in one of his rages because
I admitted that it would be an experiment. He wanted to know
what kind of a daughter I was, and I told him the kind he had
made me. Isn't that hideous?
"I've no right to trouble you, but I must confide in some one
or my heart will break. There's no one here I can talk to,
though many are kind. And Ray--perhaps you think I should
have written all this to him. But I wasn't moved to do so,
Honora. Try to forgive me for telling you these troubles now
in the last few days before your baby comes. I suppose I turn
to you because you are one of the blessed corporation of
mothers--part and parcel of the mother-fact. It's like being
a part of the good rolling earth, just as familiar and
comforting. Thinking of you mysteriously makes me good. I'm
going to forget myself, the way you do, and 'make a home'
for father.
"Your own