Chapter 9

Now, when she had taken a mother's place to Barbara, and worked for the blind man as his wife would never have dreamed of doing, she saw the faithless one worshipped almost as a household god. The power to disillusionise North lay in her hands--of that she was very sure. What if she should come to him some day with the letter Constance had left for another man and which she had never delivered? What if she should open it, at his bidding, and read him the burning sentences Constance had written to another during her last hour on earth? Knowing, beyond doubt, that Constance was faithless, would he at last turn to the woman he had deserted for the sake of a pretty face? The question racked Miriam by night and by day.

[Sidenote: Miriam's Jealousy]

And, as always, the dead Constance, mute, accusing, bitterly reproachful, haunted her dreams. Her fear of it became an obsession. As Barbara grew daily more to resemble her mother, Miriam's position became increasingly difficult and complex.

Sometimes she waited outside the door until she could summon courage to go in to Barbara, who lay, helpless, in the very room where her mother had died. Miriam never entered without seeing upon the dressing table those two envelopes, one addressed to Ambrose North and one to herself. Her own envelope was bulky, since it contained two letters beside the short note which might have been read to anybody. These two, with seals unbroken, were safely put away in Miriam's room.

One was addressed to Laurence Austin. Miriam continually told herself that it was impossible for her to deliver it--that the person to whom it was addressed was dead. She tried persistently to forget the five years that had intervened between Constance's death and his. For five years, he had lived almost directly across the street and Miriam saw him daily. Yet she had not given him the letter, though the vision of Constance, dumbly pleading for some boon, had distressed her almost every night until Laurence Austin died.

After that, there had been peace--but only for a little while. Constance still came, though intermittently, and reproached Miriam for betraying her trust.

[Sidenote: The One Betrayal]

As Barbara's twenty-second birthday approached, Miriam sometimes wondered whether Constance would not cease to haunt her after the other letter was delivered. She had been faithful in all things but one--surely she might be forgiven the one betrayal. The envelope was addressed, in a clear, unfaltering hand: "To My Daughter Barbara. To be opened upon her twenty-second birthday." In her brief note to Miriam, Constance had asked her to destroy it unopened if Barbara should not live until the appointed day.

She had said nothing, however, about the other letter--had not even alluded to its existence. Yet there it was, apparently written upon a single sheet of paper and enclosed in an envelope firmly sealed with wax. The monogram, made of the interlaced initials "C.N.," still lingered upon the seal. For twenty years and more the letter had waited, unread, and the hands that once would eagerly have torn it open were long since made one with the all-hiding, all-absolving dust.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: At Supper]

At supper, Ambrose North still had his fine linen and his Satsuma cup. Miriam sat at the other end, where the coarse cloth and the heavy dishes were. She used the fine china for Barbara, also, washing it carefully six times every day.

The blind man ate little, for he was lonely without the consciousness that Barbara sat, smiling, across the table from him.

"Is she asleep?" he asked, of Miriam.

"Yes."

"She hasn't had her supper yet, has she?"

"No."

"When she wakes, will you let me take it up to her?"

"Yes, if you want to."

"Miriam, tell me--does Barbara look like her mother?" His voice was full of love and longing.

"There may be a slight resemblance," Miriam admitted.

"But how much?"

[Sidenote: The Same Old Question]

A curious, tigerish impulse possessed Miriam. He had asked her this same question many times and she had always eluded him with a vague generalisation.

"How much does she resemble her mother?" he insisted. "You told me once that they were 'something alike.'"

"That was a long time ago," answered Miriam. She was breathing hard and her eyes glittered. "Barbara has changed lately."

"Don't hide the truth for fear of hurting me," he pleaded. "Once for all I ask you--does Barbara resemble her mother?"

For a moment Miriam paused, then all her hatred of the dead woman rose up within her. "No," she said, coldly. "Their hair and eyes are nearly the same colour, but they are not in the least alike. Why? What difference does it make?"

"None," sighed the blind man. "But I am glad to have the truth at last, and I thank you. Sometimes I have fancied, when Barbara spoke, that it was Constance talking to me. It would have been a great satisfaction to me to have had my baby the living image of her mother, since I am to see again, but it is all right as it is."

Since he was to see! Miriam had not counted upon that possibility, and she clenched her hands in swift remorse. If he should discover that she had lied to him, he would never forgive her, and she would lose what little regard he had for her. He had a Puritan insistence upon the literal truth.

"How beautiful Constance was," he sighed. An inarticulate murmur escaped from Miriam, which he took for full assent.

"Did you ever see anyone half so beautiful, Miriam?"

Her throat was parched, but Miriam forced herself to whisper, "No." This much was truth.

[Sidenote: A Beautiful Bride]

"How sweet she was and what pretty ways she had," he went on. "Do you remember how lovely she was in her wedding gown?"

Again Miriam forced herself to answer, "Yes."

"Do you remember how people said we were mismated--that a man of fifty could never hope to keep the love of a girl of twenty, who knew nothing of the world?"

"I remember," muttered Miriam.

"And it was false, wasn't it?" he asked, hungering for assurance. "Constance loved me--do you remember how dearly she loved me?"

[Sidenote: Beloved Constance]

A thousand words struggled for utterance, but Miriam could not speak just then. She longed, as never before, to tear open the envelope addressed to Laurence Austin and read to North the words his beloved Constance had written to another man before she took her own life. She longed to tell him how, for months previous, she had followed Constance when she left the house, and discovered that she had a trysting-place down on the shore. He wanted the truth, did he? Very well, he should have it--the truth without mercy.

"Constance," she began, huskily, "Constance loved----"

"I know," interrupted Ambrose North. "I know how dearly she loved me up to the very last. Even Barbara, baby that she was, felt it. She remembers it still."

Barbara's bell tinkled upstairs while he said the last words. "She wants us," he said, his face illumined with love. "If you will prepare her supper, Miriam, I will take it up."

The room swayed before Miriam's eyes and her senses were confused. She had drawn her dagger to strike and it had been forced back into its sheath by some unseen hand. "But I will," she repeated to herself again and again as her trembling hands prepared Barbara's tray. "He shall know the truth--and from me."

* * * * *

"Barbara," said the old man, as he entered the room, "your Daddy has brought up your supper."

"I'm glad," she responded, brightly. "I'm very hungry."

"We have been talking downstairs of your mother," he went on, as he set down the tray. "Miriam has been telling me how beautiful she was, what winning ways she had, and how dearly she loved us. She says you do not look at all like her, Barbara, and we both have been thinking that you did."

[Sidenote: Disappointed]

Barbara was startled. Only a few days ago, Aunt Miriam had assured her that she was the living image of her mother. She was perplexed and disappointed. Then she reflected that when she had asked the question she had been very ill and Aunt Miriam was trying to answer in a way that pleased her. She generously forgave the deceit for the sake of the kindly motive behind it.

"Dear Aunt Miriam," said Barbara, softly. "How good she has been to us, Daddy."

"Yes," he replied; "I do not know what we should have done without her. I want to do something for her, dear. Shall we buy her a diamond ring, or some pearls?"

"We'll see, Daddy. When I can walk, and you can see, we shall do many things together that we cannot do now."

The old man bent down very near her. "Flower of the Dusk," he whispered, "when may I go?"

"Go where, Daddy?"

"To the city, you know, with Doctor Conrad. I want to begin to see."

Barbara patted his hand. "When I am strong enough to spare you," she said, "I will let you go. When you see me, I want to be well and able to go to meet you without crutches. Will you wait until then?"

"I want to see my baby. I do not care about the crutches, now that you are to get well. I want to see you, dear, so very, very much."

"Some day, Daddy," she promised him. "Wait until I'm almost well, won't you?"

"Just as you say, dear, but it seems so long."

"I couldn't spare you now, Daddy. I want you with me every day."

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Miriam's Prayer]

Though long unused to prayer, Miriam prayed that night, very earnestly, that Ambrose North might not recover his sight; that he might never see the daughter who lived and spoke in the likeness of her dead mother. It was long past midnight when she fell asleep. The house had been quiet for several hours.

As she slept, she dreamed. The door opened quietly, yet with a certain authority, and Constance, in her grave-clothes, came into her room. The white gown trailed behind her as she walked, and the two golden braids, so like Barbara's, hung down over either shoulder and far below her waist.

She fixed her deep, sad eyes upon Miriam, reproachfully, as always, but her red lips were curled in a mocking smile. "Do your worst," she seemed to say. "You cannot harm me now."

[Sidenote: The Vision]

The vision sat down in a low chair and rocked back and forth, slowly, as though meditating. Occasionally, she looked at Miriam doubtfully, but the mocking smile was still there. At last Constance rose, having come, apparently, to some definite plan. She went to the dresser, opened the lower drawer, and reached under the pile of neatly-folded clothing.

Cold as ice, Miriam sprang to her feet. She was wide awake now, but the room was empty. The door was open, half-way, and she could not remember whether she had left it so when she went to bed. She had always kept her bedroom door closed and locked, but since Barbara's illness had left it at least ajar, that she might be able to hear a call in the night.

Shaken like an aspen in a storm, Miriam lighted her candle and stared into the shadows. Nothing was there. The clock ticked steadily--almost maddeningly. It was just four o'clock.

She, too, opened the lower drawer of the dresser and thrust her hand under the clothing. The letters were still there. She drew them out, her hands trembling, and read the superscriptions with difficulty, for the words danced, and made themselves almost illegible.

Constance was coming back for the letters, then? That was out of Miriam's power to prevent, but she would keep the knowledge of their contents--at least of one. She thrust aside contemptuously the letter to Barbara--she cared nothing for that.

[Sidenote: The Seal Broken]

Taking the one addressed to "Mr. Laurence Austin; Kindness of Miss Leonard," she went back to bed, taking her candle to the small table that stood at the head of the bed. With forced calmness, she broke the seal which the dead fingers had made so long ago, opened it shamelessly, and read it.

"You who have loved me since the beginning of time," the letter began, "will understand and forgive me for what I do to-day. I do it because I am not strong enough to go on and do my duty by those who need me.

"If there should be meeting past the grave, some day you and I shall come together again with no barrier between us. I take with me the knowledge of your love, which has sheltered and strengthened and sustained me since the day we first met, and which must make even a grave warm and sweet.

"And, remember this--dead though I am, I love you still; you and my little lame baby who needs me so and whom I must leave because I am not strong enough to stay.

"Through life and in death and eternally,

"Yours,

"CONSTANCE."

In the letter was enclosed a long, silken tress of golden hair. It curled around Miriam's fingers as though it were alive, and she thrust it from her. It was cold and smooth and sinuous, like a snake. She folded up the letter, put it back in the envelope with the lock of hair, then returned it to its old hiding-place, with Barbara's.

"So, Constance," she said to herself, "you came for the letters? Come and take them when you like--I do not fear you now."

[Sidenote: The Evidence]

All of her suspicions were crystallised into certainty by this one page of proof. Constance might not have violated the letter of her marriage vow--very probably had not even dreamed of it--but in spirit, she had been false.

"Come, Constance," said Miriam, aloud; "come and take your letters. When the hour comes, I shall tell him, and you cannot keep me from it."

[Sidenote: Triumph]

She was curiously at peace, now, and no longer afraid. Her dark eyes blazed with triumph as she lay there in the candle light. The tension within her had snapped when suspicion gave way to absolute knowledge. Thwarted and denied and pushed aside all her life by Constance and her memory, at last she had come to her own.

XIII

"Woman Suffrage"

There was a shuffling step on the stairway, accompanied by spasmodic shrieks and an occasional "ouch." Roger looked up from his book in surprise as Miss Mattie made her painful way into the room.

"Why, Mother. What's the matter?"

[Sidenote: Miss Mattie's Back]

Miss Mattie sat down in the chair she had made out of a flour barrel and screamed as she did so. "What is it?" he demanded. "Are you ill?"

"Roger," she replied, "my back is either busted, or the hinge in it is rusty from overwork. I stooped over to open the lower drawer in my bureau, and when I come to rise up, I couldn't. I've been over half an hour comin' downstairs. I called you twice, but you didn't hear me, and I knowed you was readin', so I thought I might better save my voice to yell with."

"I'm sorry," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"About the first thing to do, I take it, is to put down that book. Now, if you'll put on your hat, you can go and get that new-fangled doctor from the city. The postmaster's wife told me yesterday that he'd sent Barbara one of them souverine postal cards and said on it he'd be down last night. As you go, you might stop and tell the Norths that he's comin', for they don't go after their mail much and most likely it's still there in the box. Tell Barbara that the card has a picture of a terrible high buildin' on it and the street is full of carriages, both horsed and unhorsed. If he can make the lame walk and the blind see, I reckon he can fix my back. I'll set here."

"Shan't I get someone to stay with you while I'm gone, Mother? I don't like to leave you here alone. Miss Miriam would----"

"Miss Miriam," interrupted his mother, "ain't fit company for a horse or cow, let alone a sufferin' woman. She just sets and stares and never says nothin'. I have to do all the talkin' and I'm in no condition to talk. You run along and let me set here in peace. It don't hurt so much when I set still."

[Sidenote: Roger's Errand]

Roger obediently started on his errand, but met Doctor Conrad half-way. The two had never been formally introduced, but Roger knew him, and the Doctor remembered Roger as "the nice boy" who was with Ambrose North and Eloise when he went over to tell them that Barbara was all right.

"Why, yes," said Allan. "If it's an emergency case, I'll come there first. After I see what's the matter, I'll go over to North's and then come back. I seem to be getting quite a practice in Riverdale."

When they went in, Roger introduced Doctor Conrad to the patient. "You'll excuse my not gettin' up," said Miss Mattie, "for it's about the gettin' up that I wanted to see you. Roger, you run away. It ain't proper for boys to be standin' around listenin' when woman suffrage is bein' discussed by the only people havin' any right to talk of it--women and doctors."

Roger coloured to his temples as he took his hat and hurried out. With an effort Doctor Conrad kept his face straight, but his eyes were laughing.

[Sidenote: What's Wrong?]

"Now, what's wrong?" asked Allan, briefly, as Roger closed the door.

"It's my back," explained the patient. "It's busted. It busted all of a sudden."

"Was it when you were stooping over, perhaps to pick up something?"

Miss Mattie stared at him in astonishment. "Are you a mind-reader, or did Roger tell you?"

"Neither," smiled Allan. "Did a sharp pain come in the lumbar region when you attempted to straighten up?"

"'Twan't the lumber room. I ain't been in the attic for weeks, though I expect it needs straightenin'. It was in my bedroom. I was stoopin' over to open a bureau drawer, and when I riz up, I found my back was busted."

[Sidenote: The Prescription]

"I see," said Allan. He was already writing a prescription. "If your son will go down and get this filled, you will have no more trouble. Take two every four hours."

Miss Mattie took the bit of paper anxiously. "No surgical operation?" she asked.

"No," laughed Allan.

"No mortar piled up on me and left to set? No striped nurses?"

"No plaster cast," Allan assured her, "and no striped nurses."

"I reckon it ain't none of my business," remarked Miss Mattie, "but why didn't you do somethin' like this for Barbara instead of cuttin' her up? I'm worse off than she ever was, because she could walk right spry with crutches, and crutches wouldn't have helped me none when I was risin' up from the bureau drawer."

"Barbara's case is different. She had a congenital dislocation of the femur."

Miss Mattie's jaw dropped, but she quickly recovered herself. "And what have I got?"

"Lumbago."

"My disease is shorter," she commented, after a moment of reflection, "but I'll bet it feels worse."

"I'll ask your son to come in if I see him," said Doctor Conrad, reaching for his hat, "and if you don't get well immediately, let me know. Good-bye."

Roger was nowhere in sight, but he was watching the two houses, and as soon as he saw Doctor Conrad go into North's, he went back to his mother.

[Sidenote: Miss Mattie's "Disease"]

"Barbara's disease has three words in it, Roger," she explained, "and mine has only one, but it's more painful. You're to go immediately with this piece of paper and get it full of the medicine he's written on it. I've been lookin' at it, but I don't get no sense out of it. He said to take two every four hours--two what?"

"Pills, probably, or capsules."

"Pills? Now, Roger, you know that no pill small enough to swallow could cure a big pain like this in my back. The postmaster's wife had the rheumatiz last Winter, and she took over five quarts of Old Doctor Jameson's Pain Killer, and it never did her a mite of good. What do you think a paper that size, full of pills, can do for a person that ain't able to stand up without screechin'?"

"Well, we'll try it anyway, Mother. Just sit still until I come back with the medicine."

He went out and returned, presently, with a red box containing forty or fifty capsules. Miss Mattie took it from him and studied it carefully. "This box ain't more'n a tenth as big as the pain," she observed critically.

Roger brought a glass of water and took out two of the capsules. "Take these," he said, "and at half past two, take two more. Let's give Doctor Conrad a fair trial. It's probably a more powerful medicine than it seems to be."

[Sidenote: A Difficulty]

Miss Mattie had some difficulty at first, as she insisted on taking both capsules at once, but when she was persuaded to swallow one after the other, all went well. "I suppose," she remarked, "that these long narrow pills have to be took endways. If a person went to swallow 'em crossways, they'd choke to death. I was careful how I took 'em, but other people might not be, and I think, myself, that round pills are safer."

"I went to the office," said Roger, "and told the Judge I wouldn't be down to-day. I have some work I can do at home, and I'd rather not leave you."

"It's just come to my mind now," mused Miss Mattie, ignoring his thoughtfulness, "about the minister's sermon Sunday. He said that everything that came to us might teach us something if we only looked for it. I've been thinkin' as I set here, what a heap I've learned about my back this mornin'. I never sensed, until now, that it was used in walkin'. I reckoned that my back was just kind of a finish to me and was to keep the dust out of my vital organs more'n anything else. This mornin' I see that the back is entirely used in walkin'. What gets me is that Barbara North had to have crutches when her back was all right. Nothin' was out of kilter but her legs, and only one of 'em at that."

"Here's your paper, Mother." Roger pulled _The Metropolitan Weekly_ out of his pocket.

"Lay it down on the table, please. It oughtn't to have come until to-morrow. I ain't got time for it now."

"Why, Mother? Don't you want to read?"

[Sidenote: Proper Care]

The knot of hair on the back of Miss Mattie's head seemed to rise, and her protruding wire hairpins bristled. "I should think you'd know," she said, indignantly, "when you've been takin' time from the law to read your pa's books to Barbara North, that no sick person has got the strength to read. Even if my disease is only in one word when hers is in three, I reckon I'm goin' to take proper care of myself."

"But you're sitting up and she can't," explained Roger, kindly.

"Sittin' up or not sittin' up ain't got nothin' to do with it. If my back was set in mortar as it ought to have been, I wouldn't be settin' up either. I can't get up without screamin', and as long as I've knowed Barbara she's never been that bad. That new-fangled doctor hasn't come out of North's yet, either. How much do you reckon he charges for a visit?"

"Two or three dollars, I suppose."

Miss Mattie clucked sharply with her false teeth. "'Cordin' to that," she calculated, "he was here about twenty cents' worth. But I'm willin' to give him a quarter--that's a nickel extra for the time he was writin' out the recipe for them long narrow pills that would choke anybody but a horse if they happened to go down crossways. There he comes, now. If he don't come here of his own accord, you go out and get him, Roger. I want he should finish his visit."

[Sidenote: The Doctor's Visit]

But it was not necessary for Roger to go. "Of his own accord," Doctor Conrad came across the street and opened the creaky white gate. When he came in, he brought with him the atmosphere of vitality and good cheer. He had, too, that gentle sympathy which is the inestimable gift of the physician, and which requires no words to make itself felt.

His quick eye noted the box of capsules upon the table, as he sat down and took Miss Mattie's rough, work-worn hand in his. "How is it?" he asked. "Better?"

"Mebbe," she answered, grudgingly. "No more'n a mite, though."

"That's all we can expect so soon. By to-morrow morning, though, you should be all right." His manner unconsciously indicated that it would be the one joy of a hitherto desolate existence if Miss Mattie should be perfectly well again in the morning.