Mrs. Wise was dead.
The second year of the little school life at Sunnymeade she had fallen ill of typhoid fever, and though cured at length of that, she had seemed too listless and tired to struggle back to health.
She slipped away, away; there came a week when the little boys trod softly about the house, and looked at her with round awed eyes, and never answered a word back when she fretted at them as usual for their noise, their muddy boots, their quarrellings.
What was the strange thing their father had told them that morning? Their mother dying, dying fast. And yet how strange!—she still lay on the old sofa in the dining-room, and only that very morning [166] had sewn up the buttonhole of little Alf’s braces, and stitched the torn brim of Teddie’s hat.
Dying! Why, she had spoken irritably to their father an hour ago, and had smacked baby’s hands because he would squeeze the thin kitten and drag it across the room by the tail. Surely dying people spoke softly and wept, and said gentle things and prayed—prayed all the time!
The boys were inclined to disbelieve their father, who had told them the fact thus beforehand, that she, poor soul, might in her last days have gentleness and tenderness around her all the time.
“Doesn’t she know, Daddie?” little Alf whispered in the afternoon that followed the morning on which they had first learnt the news.
He had been sitting on a stool not far from the sofa, gazing at his mother with solemn, half-frightened eyes, while she sewed on a commonplace and necessary button. She had scolded him for getting it off again so soon—surely, surely it was impossible that she could think of such things if she were as ill as his father had said?
When Dr. Wise entered the room, the child could not forbear to put the question, though he had been warned carefully to say nothing before his mother.
He crept to his father, still with that earnest, half-fearful expression in his eyes.
“Doesn’t she know, Daddie?” he whispered, and [167] thought he had made his voice very small and soft. But lusty little Alf’s whisper!
His father frowned him from the room, and he moved to go in instant, frightened haste, holding his knickerbockers up as he went.
“He can’t go without his braces,” said the voice from the sofa; “come here, Alf.”
The child moved back to her and stood nervously still while she fastened the little straps in place.
“There,” she said, “now go and play, and don’t get your clean coat dirtied, and don’t let me hear you quarrelling with Richie, and be a kind little brother too, and let Freddie get in your cart if he wants to.”
“Yes, mother dear,” said Alf, and gave her one more strange little look and passed out of the room.
“Did you drink your port, Ellie?” the doctor said, glancing at the lunch-tray near her. His eyes were looking at her very tenderly.
Did she—did she know, or must he tell her in so many words?
“No, I didn’t,” she said; “it is foolish of you to get it—you know you can’t afford seven-and-six a bottle.”
“I think I can, dear,” he said gently.
“Oh!” she said, and the fret in her voice jarred him strangely, “just look at those grease-spots on your waistcoat. Didn’t Sarah set your table-napkin? The careless, heedless creature! Yet how you can [168] let food drop like that I don’t know. It is a pretty example for the children. And you never think of me, always cleaning and sponging your clothes for you.”
The doctor looked with troubled eyes at the drop or two of tea his waistcoat still bore from his hurriedly swallowed lunch. Then he drew out his handkerchief and rubbed the marks anxiously away.
“See, they don’t show, dear,” he said gently.
“Let me see,” she said.
He came closer for inspection, his eyes still looking down ruefully at his coat.
“Robert! Robert!” she cried, and the suddenly changed voice seemed to come from a depth of anguish he had never dreamt it was in her nature to sound. He looked at her, startled, saw her working face and the agony in her eyes, and was down on his knees beside her, holding her, helping her, great tears bursting from his eyes.
“Oh!” she said, when her voice came to her again, after a speechless indrawing of breath, “do you think I don’t know? Do you really think I don’t know? Do you think I didn’t hear poor little Alf and see his big eyes? Do you think I haven’t known for weeks—weeks?”
“Hush!” he said, his tears raining hotter, “hush, Ellie—Ellie, dear one.”
She gave a dreadful little laugh.
“Oh! I don’t mind,” she said, “I don’t mind in [169] the least. You will all be glad, I know. Oh, of course you will be decently sorry first—black bands on your arms and all that, even if the money won’t run to black suits. But even baby will laugh and crow more when there is no one worrying, worrying all day long.”
“Ellie,” he said, “Ellie—for God’s sake.”
“I like to see you crying,” she said, “one wouldn’t like to think no one spared any tears. But I can see you so well in a month from now, smoking peacefully on this sofa with no nagging voice going on and on.”
“Ellie,” he said, “isn’t it hard enough for me? Are you trying to torture me past endurance?”
Her lips trembled; she tried to be hard again, but failed. Then she gave a piteous sob.
“I can’t help it, Rob,” she said, and clung to him. “Ever since I’ve known, I’ve been trying to be different, to act as one should with death to face. But oh! if you knew what it is to feel you have bungled your life, so that no one will care when you’re gone! Every time I have been irritable lately I have wondered at myself, but”—her voice choked—“if I hadn’t had that relief I couldn’t have borne it.”
“My wife, my poor little wife,” he said; he stroked her hair, he held her nervous hand. “God knows you have done your best; the odds have been heavy against us both, that is all. Oh! if I had been more tender to you, poor little girl!”
Her lips quivered again.
[170]
“You have nothing to reproach yourself with,
Robert,” she said, “everything was my fault. Do
you think I don’t remember now how often you
wanted to be loving—wanted to pet me? And I
was always too busy, always making a Martha of
myself, always toiling after the little boys.”
He sighed a little—an irrepressible sigh; a vision of their spoilt lives stood mutely before him.
“But—no,” he said, “no, no—the fault has been mine; surely I could have worked harder and made life easier for you.”
She shook her head and leaned against him in silence for a little space.
She spoke calmly, quietly.
“When I am dead, I should like you to marry Mrs. Conway,” she said.
“Oh, hush, hush, hush!” he cried; “Ellie, I cannot stand much more.”
“I am not trying to hurt you now,” she said. “Don’t think I am just saying this as a martyr might. I could go quite peacefully if I felt my poor old Rob was going to taste happiness, after all these wretched years. I feel as if I had been like the dresses I wear that Clif hates—a nondescript, colourless thing. And Life itself is such a dull, grey affair at best, I ought to have tried to be a bright colour.”
Through the window came the voices of the little boys, all their soberness dispersed by the sun’s merry magic.
[171]
“I’m off to get locusts,” shouted Richie. The
clatter of his strong little boots sounded along the
wooden verandah.
Lighter footfalls followed—“Me, me too, Richie,” cried Alfie’s voice.
And toddling steps came along eagerly, stumblingly. “Me dit gwirlies, me dit gwirlies, Wichie.”
“Oh, my boys, my boys!” the mother sobbed, “and they will only remember me carping, fretful, scolding. But no one will keep Alfie from telling stories now, and Richie from being greedy, and Clif from selfishness.”
“I will do my best, Ellie,” said the poor doctor.
“But you are away,” she said despairingly, “how can you watch them? You must give them another mother.”
But again he implored her not to make it too hard for him, and she grew silent, and leaning her head against him stared with wistful eyes about the shabby, comfortless room, that soon would know her no more. And yet there was a strange pleasure in the thought of shutting her eyes for ever on it. Since the time Clif was a fractious, delicate baby (he was fourteen now), it seemed to her she had never known what it was to have an unbroken night. Oh! the peace of death, the exquisite restfulness!—she felt too tired to lift her eyes just yet to green pastures or streets of sardonyx and pearls,—all she wanted was to be left alone to sleep, sleep, sleep.
[172]
Away in her own cottage, some days later, Mrs. Conway’s
eyes were wet over a parcel of books Clif
had just brought her.
The lad’s eyes were red, his mouth twitched at every word; it was only yesterday he and his father and Teddie and Alf had stood by that yawning grave, and watched their mother put away out of sight and sound for all time.
“Father says she asked him to give you these,” he said, thrusting out his parcel; Mrs. Conway’s eyes filled at his desolate looks; she put her arm round his shoulder as he stood there.
“Poor old fellow, poor old fellow,” she said.
“If you knew what a beast I’ve been to her,” he burst out. Then his tears choked him, and he pushed her comforting arm aside, and went to break his heart in his old hiding-place. There was a note with the books.
“You are the only woman friend I have,” it said, “so there is no one else I can ask this of. Help my little boys all you can, and in any way you can brighten my husband’s life.
“I send you these books, they may help you—to me they seemed cruelly hard to follow. And I send you my own notes of the boys’ characters. I know quite well this is not a small thing I am asking, but what can I do? Five little boys, the bitter world, and no woman. Forgive me, and help me thus, when I am past all other helping.”
[173]
Oh, the books! Human Buds, of course, and
all its marvellous maxims and rules; Souls and
Minds of Children; and Our Responsibilities to the
Young.
But the red note-book was the most pitiful. Such laboured notes, such anxious writing down of smallest detail of each lad’s behaviour.
Even Richie’s four-year-old sinfulness was soberly expatiated upon. “Did his present greediness indicate a tendency to avarice in the future?” asked the sad pen. “Must watch carefully and pass nothing by,” it added. “Memo: deprive him of sweet things for a day—most efficacious punishment.”
And Alfie,—Alfie who at one time showed a tendency to stray from truth’s narrow path when such rending questions as “Who stole the cake?” or “Who broke the window?” were sternly put. “Alfie,” said the notes, “must be appealed to through his better nature, must be told stories of noble men and boys; Washington’s glorious tale among others.”
There was even a page headed “Little Baby.” Baby was passionate, it seemed, more so than any of the others; he hit the table angrily if he bumped his head, he screamed himself into fits if sugar was not forthcoming.
“If not checked, might not such anger lead him,” said the frightened notes, “some day to some dreadful crime?”
After this, the last note in the book, there were [174] blots that tears might have caused, or a pen let fall despairingly.
Phyl and Dolly coming in to ask had not Richie and Alf better be kept for tea, found their mother sobbing over the pitiful strivings and gropings of that poor dead woman.