Part 2

Once my very own mother, speaking excitedly, too, stopped short when I came in, and though I looked and looked at her with forty-horse questioning power in my eyes, she answered nothing, and my most penetrating and gimlet-like glance finally brought out a very brief, not to say sharp, suggestion that I sit down and stare at my spelling-book awhile--which, like most good advice, was neither kindly given nor willingly followed. So I was worrying, when one morning I stood listening to Miss Linda’s unspeakably sad music. She was playing with fervor and more strength than usual, and suddenly she was seized with a paroxysm of coughing. Instead of going to her at once, I ran into the next room for some troches that were on a table, and before I could return with them she had fallen and was lying motionless on the floor. My cry and the shouts of little Arthur gave the alarm. Mrs. Hyler entered first. She went very white, but she stooped and lifted Linda like a child, and I thought it strange that, as she carried her, she held a handkerchief to her face. Mr. Hyler appearing suddenly, exclaimed in excited tones: “Ice--ice! Salt--linen!” and, taking these exclamations as orders, I ran forward, intending to carry the message to my mother. At that moment Mrs. Hyler stretched out her hand to push the door more widely open, and on the breast of her light dress, just where Miss Linda’s head was resting, a great, red stain was slowly, evilly spreading. I glanced from it to the handkerchief in her hand, and it was red! red!! red!!! With stiffening lips, I whispered: “Miss Linda--oh, Miss Linda!” and suddenly there came a mighty roaring in my ears--a cold air on my face, and as I sank into the windy darkness, afar off I heard a voice cry: “There she goes! Catch the child--ah! she saw it all.”

Yes, in very truth I had seen all! And when, with a general sense of discomfort, I opened my eyes upon the sunlight again, I found myself attended by two of the seven sons, who cast water on me with lavish hand and pounded me with an affectionate brutality that left marks by which my fainting might be remembered for days after. I looked stupidly at them at first and wondered, and then I saw that great, red, growing stain beneath the wasted, white face, and I broke into such sobs as fairly frightened them. I was crouching on the top step of the porch, with my feet drawn up and my arms and head resting on my knees, and as I glanced downward I saw four bare, brown, boyish feet, and noted how restless they were. With my heart almost bursting with pain, some portion of my brain made a note of the fact that one of the four great toes before me had received a recent cut that must have been given by a hoe. Then the elder one thumped me kindly on the back and said: “Don’t, Carrie, don’t!”--and the other one said, in a husky voice: “Why, didn’t yo’ never know at all that sister Linda was a-goin’ to die?”

I gave an agonized cry at the words, and the elder boy exclaimed: “What did yer want to say that for? For two cents I’d give yer a good lickin’!”--while he, of the toe, said: “No, yer won’t give me a lickin’ for two cents, nor for one cent, neither!”

“Why won’t I?”

“Why didn’t Jack eat his supper, eh?”

And then they grabbed at each other over my head, but a grave voice said: “Boys, I never was so shamed by you before!”

It was Alfred, the eldest of the seven, and a “grown-up” himself. He paid no attention to their explanations--their recriminations; he simply stooped, and, lifting my shaking body in his arms, carried me into the house. As he was going up the narrow stairs a splash came on my cheek that was no tear of mine. A thrill went through me from head to foot--I lifted my swollen lids to look at him. His face wore that gray tint paleness brings to dark people, and in his always sad eyes I saw slow tears gathering. I buried my own face in his bosom, and laying my shaking, little hand across his eyes, I sobbed: “Don’t, oh, please don’t! She couldn’t bear it if she knew!”

He took me to my mother’s room and, placing me high against the pillows, deftly tied a wet handkerchief about my hot brows, and then he stood looking down at me for a moment before he said, with a quivering voice: “You know now, don’t you, Carrie?”

I nodded my head and wrung my hands silently. “Yes,” he went on, “she is going soon, dear--and--and--it’s rough! Good God! Carrie! if you could have seen her three years ago--if you could have heard her sing! I think sometimes my father is a devil! There--there--I didn’t mean to say that!--but see, dear, little girl!” He knelt down quickly by the bed and took my hands in his. He spoke rapidly--pressing my fingers tightly, to hold my attention: “They are going to ask you to do something--to-morrow, perhaps--this awful attack of Linda’s will hurry things--I can’t tell you _what_ they will ask; I have not the time, but, Carrie, refuse! Don’t be badgered--don’t be coaxed--not even by darling Linda! One martyr is enough! Refuse, refuse! for, oh, we will be a hard lot when sister has left us!”

His body shook with sobs; for a moment he let his head rest on the edge of the bed. Then he rose and left the room to go to his own, where I heard him lock himself in. And that day ended my ignorance about Miss Linda’s fate, and it also ended Miss Linda’s music--she had played her last note.

That I had received a shock was evident to the whole family, and I heard the sick girl say to her father: “Wait, papa, dear, don’t speak to Carrie yet--give her a little time.”

But my grief was greater than my curiosity, and I never asked myself what he could have to speak to me about, or what he could possibly ask of me. I only thought of her--to fan her, hand her a drink, bring her a flower, carry a message, or, above all, during that afternoon hour, to crouch at her side and watch her “silent singing,” as I called it. She never seemed to do it before her mother or anyone but me. But while she was supposed to be taking a nap, and I fanned her quietly, she would lie, with closed eyes, and softly beat time with her shadowy hand, and her throat would swell and her lips move, but no sound came; and through much watching of her, with my heart in my eyes, I came to know what she sang. Often it was “Lead, Kindly Light,” but more often, to my torture now, it was that expression of absolute submission, “Just as I Am, Without One Plea.” And when her pale lips found the words, “O, Lamb of God, I Come,” I would bite my lips and hold my breath, that I might not break into the wild sobs that would have sore distressed her.

I had not liked the Rev. Hyler at any time, but when I learned that, minister as he was, the sole religious observance for the family was a hasty, almost angry, snatch at a blessing on the food, while for visitors there were family prayers both night and morning, my dislike became marked. Linda saw it as she saw everything, and unable to defend him, she suffered and was ashamed, but kept silent until that hot afternoon, when she said: “Little sister, you are not fond of papa, but try, dear--to put out of your mind--that matter of the prayers, and only think how old and tired and tried he is--and” (I heard his step approaching, and his dry, little cough)--“and listen to him kindly--and try to do what he asks of you--try, dear, for all our sakes.”

And then, to my bewilderment, the Rev. Hyler and his worn and helpless wife made solemn entry and seated themselves, and I, having risen respectfully, stood there and received the blood-curdling proposal that I should become the sister of the seven--the adopted daughter of the Rev. Hyler! Amazement kept me silent, and they went on to explain, with their eyes turned away from Linda’s face, “how bad it would be for the boys to be without a sister’s influence--and how they had been greatly gratified, though much surprised, to see that the younger boys had taken a strong liking to me,” and, glancing at their two grim faces, I wondered what they would say or do if they knew that their boys’ liking was founded upon a generous but downright falsehood, told by me to save the second youngest from a most unjust and cruel thrashing; after which I had gone at once to my mother, confessed the lie and accepted my punishment with a cheerful acquiescence that filled the seven with admiration and made them declare, with enthusiastic vulgarity, that I was “the biggest thing on ice!”

At last it dawned upon them that, for mere form’s sake, they should ask an answer from me, and it came in a swift and emphatic “NO!” They were surprised and angry, but to all their half-sneering questions--as to why and wherefore--wide-eyed and amazed, I had but one word for answer: “Mother!” The Rev. Hyler answered: “My wife will be your mother!”--and I almost laughed; then with large conclusiveness I replied: “But my mother loves me, sir!”

Miss Linda caught my hand and said: “Think, Carrie--a home--brothers--father and mother to love you.”

I looked at him a walking bitterness, I looked at her a withering disappointment and said: “No! no, dear Miss Linda, they love you, but they would not love me--and” I triumphantly added, “they will not tell you so!”

She turned questioningly to them, but the challenge was not accepted. Angrily her father bade me go, saying, “I might know what hunger was some day.”

But I answered cheerfully: “Oh, I have been hungry sometimes, and so has mother, but we were together, so it was all right. You know when you’re orphans and widows, you always come all right”--a speech that was as perfect in faith as it was imperfect in grammar.

The Rev. Hyler, with a vindictive gleam in his eye, “hoped I might be hungry again, that I might appreciate what I was rejecting”--and Miss Linda kissed me with a disappointed face, and whispered for me to go, now.

After that life became intolerable there, and soon there came a morning when, ready for an early start, I crept into Miss Linda’s room and knelt down by her bed, and with hands tight-clasped we looked--and looked--and looked, and spoke not one word between us. Then there came a call for me, and I rose to go. As I bent over to kiss her, she lifted a thin, little, warning hand and tried to turn my face away, but with a smothered cry of indignation, I caught her hand and held it while I slipped my other arm beneath her incredibly frail shoulders, and lifting her, I kissed her shadowy hair, her brow, her cheeks and her pale, dry lips. Then with a long, long look into her dark, sapphire-blue eyes, I laid her down and went out, and saw her no more forever. As I closed the door gently behind me, I heard, for the last time, the husky whisper that had grown so dear to me, and all it said was, “Little sister!”

I stumbled down the stairs, and slipping my hand into my mother’s, we faced the world once more, I having faith to believe that somewhere in its mighty length and breadth there was a home for us, and that together we should somehow find it.

For two years the gentle, little silent singer had been lying in her lonely and neglected grave, when I paid my only visit to the Hyler family. Circumstances had brought me into the neighborhood, and I felt in duty bound to “pay my respects,” as they called it. Poor Alfred’s fear seemed to have been justified, for the neighbors declared that since Linda’s death the boys had become a “hard lot,” and seemed actually to be growing more boldly bad week by week.

The Rev. Hyler and his wife at first seemed to derive a sort of sour satisfaction from my visit to them. The boys received me with noisy greetings and many poundings on the shoulders, and young savages that they were, they expressed their hospitality by the making of gifts, such as horse-hair rings, matched jack-stones, and several chunks of not-too-clean flag-root, both the smell and taste of which were particularly offensive to me.

Before tea was over all the kindness had gone out of Mrs. Hyler’s face, and it began to wear the look I had known well in former days, of dull, sullen dissatisfaction. Suddenly, apropos of nothing, she said: “I suppose, Carrie, you have heard all about Linda?”

With some hesitation I answered: “Yes, I think so. I heard that she--she went away in her sleep, and that you held her hand--but never knew when--”

“Oh yes,” she broke in, angrily, “and they told you, too, that I had sat there asleep, or I would have known--I know their tales.”

“Oh dear, Mrs. Hyler,” I cried, “indeed no one ever implied such a cruel thing! They only said she passed so gently that no one could have known the actual moment.”

She seemed somewhat mollified by this assurance, and went on more rapidly, and as she spoke she slowly turned her cup round and round in its saucer: “Linda had been so much better that last day that it seemed almost foolish when she expressed her wish to see each one of the boys alone for a few minutes. I told her so, but she only smiled and said, ‘so much the better for the boys.’ The memory of her last words to them should not be associated with suffering and pain, and so she had her way, and held each brother in her arms and whispered some last words--but smiling, smiling all the time.”

I clasped my hands tight beneath the table, and my heart seemed to beat out those cruel words, “smiling, smiling all the time,” and I whispered “Miss Linda, oh, dear Miss Linda!”

“Yes, and she had a little gift for each--and--well, later in the afternoon she was lying on the sofa, her eyes were closed, and beneath the cover her hand seemed to be moving all the time. Perhaps she was nervous, but she was saying, or repeating-to-herself-like, the words--”

I could not help it--from my lips sprang the line: “Just as I Am, Without One Plea!”

There followed a sort of general exclamation, and Mr. Hyler leaned forward, saying sharply: “How’s this? Who gave you your information--not the boys, I’m sure?”

Hot and confused, I said: “Nobody told me, I had only guessed,” (his disbelief was palpable) “because dear Miss Linda was so very fond of that hymn, and sang it nearly every day to herself.”

“And Mr. Hyler sneeringly assured me that, as Linda has lost her voice more than a year before her death, my statement had at least the element of surprise about it!” I sat mute--I could not explain to them about the silent singing.

Then Mrs. Hyler took up the hateful ball and sent it rolling toward me with the suggestion, “that as I was a good guesser, perhaps I had guessed all that she had been going to say?”

I steadied my voice and answered, respectfully, “that I had not guessed anything else,” and with mock surprise she said: “Indeed?” and then went on: “After a silence Linda spoke of you, Carrie.”

I looked up joyfully--my mortification all forgotten: “She said you were a remarkable girl” (even at that moment I was proud that she had not called me child, but “girl”). “I told her you were well enough, but in no way remarkable. She insisted, however, and then added, that if I ever saw you again I was to give you a remembrance. I thought the gift she chose very odd and unattractive, but she said” (how slowly she was speaking now) “she said you would understand it.”

She paused so long that I looked up. Her eyes were like a ferret’s, and Mr. Hyler, with his head in his hand, was watching me from between his fingers.

“Yes, ma’am,” I whispered, faintly, vaguely. Then she spoke loudly, roughly: “She told me to give you a handkerchief, and say to you, the longer you lived the better you would understand her gratitude, for your _golden silence_.”

I felt the blood fairly pushing through my veins--my downcast eyes noted that the very backs of my hands were turning red. Then Mrs. Hyler struck the table sharply and said: “Well, was she right--do you understand?”

I had no time to answer, for Mr. Hyler sprang up and, violently thrusting his chair against the wall, cried: “What folly to ask the question--of course she understands! Is not her knowledge burning red in her face?”

He stepped across the room and flung wide the door leading to his _study_, as he termed it--the boys called it “The Place of Horrors,” because they were always thrashed there with peculiar malevolence and ingenuity, and generally unjustly--they seldom got punished when they deserved it. There he waved me in. But grave and stern, Alfred’s voice came: “Father--father! Carrie is but a child--she is here alone, and she is a visitor!”

“Visitor or no visitor!” was the answer, “I will not permit this stranger, this mere nobody, to have knowledge of my daughter that is unknown to me!”

With wistful voice I meekly asked Mrs. Hyler: “Please ma’am, may I have the handkerchief?” and she sharply answered: “No--no! you shall have no handkerchief” (Alfred quickly left the room a moment) “until you have confessed every word that ever passed between you and Linda!”

Here Alfred came in again and, leaning over, placed in my hand the little gift, and kissing me, gently said: “There, Carrie, it was Linda’s own!” Then as he passed his mother, he laid his hand on her shoulder and said: “Dear mother, it was not yours to withhold--we must all honor sister’s wishes.”

Mr. Hyler fairly shouted: “Take your seat and be silent, sir! As for you,” (turning to me) “into that room! I will know what conduct my daughter was guilty of that she should be grateful for the shelter of your ‘golden silence’!”

The four eldest boys sprang furiously to their feet, but the cry that rang the wildest in that room, that might have been the cry of a woman-grown, came from my lips. I stood gasping a moment, and all I thought was: “Miss Linda, oh my Miss Linda--he insulted you--he--he, whom you always spared!” And then I began to grow cold--bodily, mentally! My shamefacedness, my fear, all fell away from me. I must have gone very white, for No. 5, a rather timid, gentle boy, said lowly: “Oh, mother, will Carrie faint? She won’t die too, will she?”

I lifted my eyes to the Rev. Hyler, and I felt a great contempt for him; while down deep in my heart there was growing a bitter anger that merged, at last, into a vindictive longing to see him suffer. I threw up my head and marched into “The Place of Horrors,” and turning, waited for him to follow me. He paused and looked at me with the same gleam in his eyes that shone there the day he wished “I might know hunger again.” Then, with petty triumph, he exclaimed: “When you leave this room I shall understand this thing!”

But he was only partially right, for when I left that room he understood several things. He banged the door shut, and then seated himself at his writing table, leaving me to stand at his opposite side, as a culprit stands before a judge. I looked at him and saw all the narrow, gray man’s meanness, his eager curiosity that was like that of a scandal-monger’s. Yet, I gave him one chance, for when he demanded: “Well, now, Miss?” I said: “Mr. Hyler, you _must_ know, there is nothing wrong about dear Miss Linda’s kind message to me--she simply--” “Stop, where you are!” he cried. “I’ll have no prevarication! Where there is secrecy there is shame! No one ever conceals what is right! I’ll have the truth, now, and the meaning of this message!”

And I answered: “Yes, sir, you shall have the truth!” and I told him briefly of Miss Linda’s silent singing, and of her undying sorrow for her lost lover. As I spoke, utter amazement grew upon his face--he stammered out: “Why--why--what are you saying? She never spoke of him! Why--nearly three years had passed--since--since--the--r--the break--and ’er--you don’t know what you are talking about--she did not grieve!”

“Oh, yes, she did!” I tranquilly replied. “That was why she would never have a light in her room at night for fear the picture might be seen. She slept with it beneath her cheek, and washed it with her tears, and dried it with her kisses. Oh, yes, she grieved!”

His eyes began to look sunken and his face was working convulsively. Then I told him how I had found the picture and wrapped it in a handkerchief and had given it silently to her in his presence, and she had been grateful, not because she was ashamed of her love or her sorrow, but because she wished to spare him suffering. And with his clenched fist he struck the table, blow after blow, crying furiously: “You lie--you baggage--you lie!” Then suddenly turning his trembling hands palms upward, he pleaded: “Carrie--tell me that you lie!” But coldly I answered: “I do not lie at all, sir--and you know I do not--besides, here are dear Miss Linda’s very own words: ‘Every day of my life I lose my love--and every day the pain is fresh and new!’”

His eyes roamed from side to side--little bubbles formed in the corners of his lips, his hand went up to his throat and tried to loosen his collar, and I could just hear the whispered words that left his lips: “Linda--Linda--Linda!” and then, I struck my last blow at him. (Oh, Miss Linda, to-day, I ask your pardon, but then I was hard and pitiless, as only the very young can be.) And I went coldly on: “She said to me, she did not wish you to know of her sorrow, because, _perhaps_”--I leaned on the table and brought myself nearer to him--“_perhaps_ you _might_ feel remorse!”

He threw one hand above his head and gave a cry: “Perhaps? perhaps? only perhaps?” and suddenly fell forward on the table, with outspread arms, and I heard him call upon the God he had never truly served and ask the mercy he had denied his own child! And, as I left the room by a second door opening into the entry where hung my hat and cloak, the vindictive devil that possessed me made me say quite clearly: “As a father pitieth his own children!”

I was tying on my hat when I distinctly heard the boys quarreling as to whether or no there would be prayers held in my honor--some saying, “yes, because I was company,” and the younger ones arguing that, as I was not a “grown-up,” “there’d be no family prayers,” then suddenly there was a howl, and I knew they were coming to blows.

I slipped from the house, without good-bye to any one, and as I passed the study window, I glanced in and saw the “gray head” bowed upon the table and two hands beating feebly, aimlessly, and suddenly I seemed to hear Miss Linda’s husky whisper saying: “And only remember how old and tired and tried he is, dear!”

And I cried aloud: “Forgive me, forgive me, dear Miss Linda--I did it because I loved you so!” and looking across the years--I say now--I love you so, dear LITTLE SILENT SINGER.

An Old Hulk

An Old Hulk

Old Thomas Brockwell--sometimes called Bull Brockwell, he of the mighty thews and sinews--had been for some years a widower, and had he remained a widower I should have been the poorer by one good friend--a lowly one--oh, yes--but you know that true friendship is one of the few things the lowly can afford to give.

But the broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced old Briton had married an American wife in the person of the mother of my closest chum--and so I learned many things about the narrow, hard, honest old giant--things that sometimes filled my eyes with tears of laughter; sometimes with stinging drops of anguished pity. The only surprising thing about Brockwell’s second marriage was that it had not taken place years before--for given a working-class Englishman of middle age--owning a house of his own--you have the worst material in the world for a widower. But, like most of his race, he was a bit contrary, and when all his housekeepers and his elderly unmarried friends pursued him openly--without even trying to hide the matrimonial _lasso_ with a few flowers of sentiment or delicacy--he shook his obstinate, old head and plunged away.