Chapter 3

"Well, Mary Ann," said Selina, coming to Jane's rescue, "there's not a particle of use shutting your eyes to plain facts. Ma's in a serious condition, and if anything happens to her, what'll you do with all that stuff? You may dye the blue, but that tartan won't take a good black."

"Why," Mary Ann said, recovering speech, "Ma has bronchitis at the beginning of cold weather every year. She'll be downstairs in a week or two, the same as she always is."

"I hope so, Mary Ann. I hope, when next she comes down, it won't be feet first. But we're told to prepare for the worst while we hope for the best," said Jane solemnly, imagining that she was quoting scripture. "You and Ma act as if there was nothing to prepare for. To see you, sitting by her sick-bed, reading trashy love-stories out of the magazines, and both of you as much interested!--it gives me a creepy feeling."

"When my poor husband lay in his last illness," sighed Selina, "he was only too willing to be flattered into the belief that he was going to get well, but I wouldn't let him deceive himself, and it's a comfort to me now I didn't. I had everything ready but my crape when he died. I didn't have to depend on the neighbors for a dress for the funeral, as I've known some do."

"Many a time I've lent, but never borrowed," Jane boasted.

"And of course, never laying off widow's weeds, I'm ready for whatever comes." Selina stroked her tarletan cuffs complacently, yet modestly withal, as if not wishing to make others feel too keenly the difference in their position.

Mary Ann gathered the dress goods together and threw them in a heap on the sofa. "There, I'm sorry I showed them to you," she cried; "you've got me almost turned against them. I declare, I'd be melancholy in two minutes more. Now you listen to me, Selina'n'Jane. There's no need to worry about Ma's preparations for the next world; she's not thinking of leaving this world yet, and there's no reason why she should. The day you two go away, she'll be standing at the gate to say good-by to you, just the same as she always is. You see if she's not, Selina'n'Jane."

She left the room with something as like a flounce as her figure would permit. Stealing softly into the half-darkened bedroom at the head of the stairs, she stood looking down at the sleeping woman in the bed. The indignant moisture in her eyes turned to a mist of tenderness that blotted out the sight until a few drops formed and fell.

She was too unsuspicious to observe an unsleeplike flickering of the eyelids. She turned to tiptoe out of the room again. There was a quick peep, a look of relief, a husky whisper, "Is that you, Mary Ann?"

"Well now, I never did see anything like the regular way you wake up at medicine time," Mary Ann said, opening the shutters and consulting her watch. "Anybody'd think you had an alarm inside of you to go off at the right time."

She administered the dose and then went on with a cheerful monologue. She had got into this habit in the sick-room, because her mother hated silence and had to save her own voice.

"What kept me so long was that everybody I met wanted to stop me and ask how you were. Everybody seemed pleased to hear you were getting along so nicely. Mrs. Dowling said Dr. Corbett told her you were the most satisfactory patient he had, because you always did everything he told you and always got well."

The sick woman smiled up at her. She had a smile that came and went easily, and Mary Ann had become skilful in the art of conducting a conversation in such a way that it served as well as words.

"And Caroline Sibbet said to tell you she was counting on going with us to the reception to the minister, and she didn't believe she'd go at all unless you were well by then."

It was a wistful smile now.

"So I told her she needn't be afraid, you'd be there."

A smile of appeal, as if to ask, "Do you really think so?"

Mary Ann gave her a puzzled glance. Something was wrong.

"Of course you'll be well by then, dearie. You heard what the doctor said to-day--that you might go back to having your cup of tea again to-morrow. That's always the first sign you're getting well, then you get leave to sit up. A week sitting up in your room, a week going downstairs----" Mary Ann began to check off the weeks on her fingers, but her mother interrupted.

"Was that Jane the doctor was talking to so long in the hall to-day?"

"Let me see. No, that was Selina."

"What was he saying to her?"

"He was saying every blessed thing that he's said to me since you took sick, and that I've repeated over again to her. But you know how it is with those two, Ma. I believe they think there's some kind of magic in the marriage ceremony that gives a woman sense--they don't give me credit for a speck. When Selina told me she was going to speak to the doctor herself to-day, says she, 'You know that it stands to reason, Mary Ann, that you can't be as experienced as one that has been a wife five years and a widow seven'; and then Jane seemed to think it was being cast up to her that she wasn't a widow, so she speaks up real snappy, 'Nor one that's brought up a family of four boys,' and then Selina _she_ looked mad." Mary Ann went off into a peal of laughter at the remembrance.

"Jane told me he said at my age the heart was weak and there was always more or less danger."

"He always says that after he's told what good sound lungs you have, and what steady progress you're making, and how he'd rather pass you for insurance than most women half your age. It means we're not to be too reckless, all the same."

"She says if I _should_ recover from this attack----"

"Sakes alive! Did she come over all that with you too? 'If you should recover from this attack, you'd better sell the house and visit round among your married children?' Visit round as much as you like, Ma, but have a house of your own to come back to; that's my advice."

"She said you wouldn't want to keep up a house after you were left alone----"

Mary Ann threw up her hands. "No wonder Selina'n'Jane are thin--they wear the flesh off their bones providing for the future. They're born Colquhouns. I'm glad I take after your side of the family. Do you know what Selina told me, Ma? The preserves she put up this year won't have to be touched till winter after next. She has enough to last her over two years. 'Land sakes!' I said, 'what do you want to eat stale jam for, when you might have fresh?' The two get competing which will be furthest ahead in their work; from the way they talk, I shouldn't wonder if before long their fall house-cleaning would be done in the spring. It makes me think of what Pa used to tell about his uncle Alick Colquhoun--how he was earlier and earlier with the milking, till at last the evening milking was done in the morning, and the morning's was done the night before. Then there was Eva Meldrum; you remember she had all her marriage outfit ready before she was asked--sheets, tablecloths, and everything. As soon as Fred Healey proposed, she got right to work with the final preparations, and when she found herself left with nothing else to do--she just sat down and wrote out notes of thanks for the wedding gifts, leaving blanks for the names of the articles. I laughed till I was sore when she told me. 'You're a Colquhoun,' I said, 'though you do only get it from your grandma; you're a Colquhoun by nature if not by name.' You know I always say it comes from having such a name. It's enough to make an anxious streak in the family, having to spell it, one generation after another."

Mary Ann laughed so heartily that the sound reached her sisters, who wondered what "Ma'n'Mary Ann" were at now. And still the little cloud lingered, and the smile only flitted waveringly.

"I called at the library, Ma, and brought home the magazine. Now we'll find out for sure whether Lady Geraldine marries the earl--I don't believe but what she's in love with the private secretary."

"Did you do the shopping?" her mother whispered.

"Yes, and if you feel rested with your sleep, I'll show you what I got. Mr. Merrill opened out such a heap of pretty things, I didn't hardly know what to take. I was thinking, Ma, it wouldn't be a bad idea to have Miss Adams in to sew, the first week you're downstairs, when we've got to be in the house anyway."

At this moment Jane and Selina came into the room to see what the sounds of merriment meant. They looked at patient and nurse with disapproving gloom. Jane settled herself at once to her knitting; Selina, who never worked in the afternoon when she was wearing her widow's collar and cuffs, sat regarding her mother with an expression of grieved wonder. Mrs. Colquhoun was uncomfortably conscious of being judged by something in her own child of other heritage than hers--one of the strangest sensations a parent can have.

"You'd ought to be kept quiet, Ma," Selina said, after a prolonged scrutiny. "If you had any suitable book in the house, I'd read to you. There was one my poor husband used to listen to by the hour in his last illness--'Preparations for the Final Journey.'"

"I'm going to run down and fetch that stuff I bought to-day to show it to Ma and get her opinion," Mary Ann interrupted, and a minute later she was standing by the bed with the three dress lengths piled in confusion upon her arms. To the woman in the bed it was as if an angel looked out from over a tumbled rainbow and smiled a message of hope to her from the sky.

"Take an end of this tartan, will you, Jane, and stand off a little with it. There, I knew you'd like it, Ma. I said so to Mr. Merrill the minute he showed it to me. That flowered piece? That's for a morning wrapper. I know it's gay, but somehow, after the flowers are all over, I do hanker after gay colors. In summer I don't feel to want them so much on my back when I can have them in the garden. The gray-blue's for a company dress. I'll have it made up in time for the reception to the new minister. You'll need a dress for that too, Ma. We'll get samples as soon as you're well enough to choose. It was between this and a shot silk, but I thought this was more becoming at my age. To tell the truth," confessed Mary Ann with a laugh, "I'd rather have had it than this, and more than either I'd love to have bought a dress off a piece of crimson velvet Mr. Merrill had just got in."

She rested an elbow on her knee and sank the length of a forefinger in her plump cheek.

"When I was a little girl," she ruminated, "I was awfully fond of the rose-in-campin' that grew in our garden at home--you mind it, mother; mullein pink, some call it. I used to say to myself that if ever I could get what clothes I liked, I'd have a dress as near like that as I could find. Well, there I was to-day looking at the very thing, the same color, the same downy look, and all, and money enough in my purse to buy it. Of course I know it would be silly. But don't it seem a pity that the things we dream of having some day--when the day comes, we don't want 'em? I feel somehow as if I'm cheating that little girl that wished for the dress like a rose-in-campin'."

She began to fold the dress pieces thoughtfully. "Made up handsomely with a train," she said, half to herself, "and worn on suitable occasions, it wouldn't seem so silly, either. I believe I'll have that crimson velvet yet," she concluded, with a laughing toss of the head. Her mother looked from the bright materials to the bright face above them.

"She would never have gone and bought all these colors just after the doctor said I wasn't going to get well," she thought, and turned over and fell into a real sleep. The last had been feigned--to escape Jane's disquieting remarks and to ponder their significance.

II

Mary Ann's prophecy was fulfilled. Her mother stood beside her at the garden gate when Jane and Selina drove away, her glances up and down the sunny street evincing all a convalescent's freshened interest in the outside world. The two faces were alike and yet unlike. The joy of living was in both; but a little uncertainty, a little appeal in the older woman's told that with her it depended to some degree upon the steadier flow of animal spirits in the younger.

Jane and Selina turned for a last look at the portly figures and waving handkerchiefs.

"Who would think to look at them," said Jane, "that Ma had only just returned from the jaws of death! It ought to be a warning to them. Some day she'll go off in one of those attacks."

"Ma'n'Mary Ann are as like as two peas," said Selina. "They're Maberlys. There never was a Maberly yet that knew how to look ahead. I declare, it gave me the shivers to see these two plunging right out of a sick-bed into colors and fashions the way they did. Ma'd ought to listen to us and sell her house and live round with her married children; at her age she'd ought to be some place where sickness and death are treated in a serious way."

Upon this point Mrs. Colquhoun was firm. She could never go back to life on a farm again, she said; "living in town was _living_." But she compromised by agreeing to devote the whole of the next summer to visiting her married children.

That was a long summer to Mary Ann. There was something wanting in all the small accustomed pleasures of her simple life, until the middle of August came, and the time set for her mother's return was within counting distance. Then her spirits rose higher with every hour. As a toper would celebrate his happiness at the saloon, she went to Mr. Merrill's dry-goods shop, and after a revel in that part of it where color most ran riot, she bought new chintz covering for the parlor furniture, a chrysanthemum pattern in various shades of fawn and glowing crimson.

The next step was to plan a reception to welcome her mother home and exhibit the new covering. Then a mighty idea struck her--this was the opportunity for the crimson velvet dress!

"I mayn't never have as good an excuse for it again," she said to the sewing-girl, "and it's the one thing needed to make everything complete. Me in that crimson and Ma in the fawn silk she had made when the Reverend Mr. Ellis came will be a perfect match for the furniture."

She patted the sofa back with affectionate pride.

"It does make you feel good to have anything new," she said, sighing contentedly. "_Anything_, I don't care if it's only a kitchen stove-lifter. But this!--There are an awful lot of things in the world do make you feel good; aren't there, Miss Adams? I mean common things, like putting on dry stockings when your feet are wet, or reading in bed, or sitting in a shady spot on a hot summer's day, with a muslin dress on--yes, or even eating your tea, if you happen to be feeling hungry and have something particularly nice," added this cheerful materialist.

The crimson velvet dress was being fitted for the last time when a letter was handed to Mary Ann. Her spectacles were downstairs, so she asked the sewing-girl to read it.

"'My dear aunt,'" Miss Adams began, "'Grandma took cold in church a week ago last Sunday and has been laid up----'"

There was a quick rustling of the velvet train. Mary Ann was vanishing into the clothes-closet. In a moment she reappeared with a small valise in her hand, and Miss Adams saw in her face what no one had ever seen there before--the shadow of a fear that hovered always on the outer edge of her happy existence and now stood close by her side. Mary Ann might be nine-tenths Maberly, but the other tenth was Colquhoun, after all.

"Put a dress into it, please," she said, handing the valise to Miss Adams. "No, I won't wait to take this off--I've a waterproof that will cover it all up. Pin the train up with safety pins--never mind if it does make pin-holes--I've just ten minutes to catch the train. _A week ago Sunday!_ Oh, why didn't they let me know before?"

When she alighted from the train at the flag station, she was clutching the waterproof close at the neck. She held it in the same unconscious grasp when she entered Jane's big farm-house, by way of the kitchen. Selina was there, making a linseed poultice, and the odor was mingled with another which she knew afterwards to be the odor of black dye.

In her mother's bedroom the same acid odor was in the air, and Jane was sitting at the window with a piece of black sewing in her hands. Jane's husband and John Maberly were standing at the foot of the bed, silent and melancholy, looking as awkward as men always do in a sick-room; Jane's stern gloom was tinged with a condescending pity for beings so out of place. Mary Ann saw them all at the first glance. Then she forgot everything; she was snuggling down against the bed, making the little, tender, glad, sorry sounds a mother makes when she has been separated from her baby.

When she lifted her head the men were leaving the room, John's face working. Selina was there with the poultice. She took it from her. One look into her mother's face had been enough. From that moment she seemed to be holding her back by sheer force of will from the edge over which she was slipping.

There was no merry gossip and laughter now, there were no love stories, no monologues with pauses for smiles. Mary Ann felt that a careless word or look would be enough to loosen that frail hold on life. When the doctor came, he found his patient in charge of a stout woman in a fresh linen dress, whose self-command was so perfect that he did not waste many words in softening the opinion for which she followed him to the door.

"Your mother's age is against her," he said. "The bronchitis in itself is not alarming, but her heart is weak, and I fear you must not expect her recovery."

He knew at once that she refused to accept his verdict, though she only said, "I'd like to telegraph for our doctor at home, if you don't mind."

When Dr. Corbett came, he confirmed the opinion.

"The bronchitis is no worse than usual," he added, "the treatment has been the same; but she seems to have lost her grip."

"There's no reason why she shouldn't catch a hold of it again," said poor Mary Ann, choking down her agony with the thought that she must return immediately to her mother's room.

"I don't quite understand it," the doctor said, with a questioning look. "The nursing--that's been good? Dr. Black tells me so."

"Yes, Jane and Selina are both good nurses, better'n what I am, if it wasn't that Ma's used to me."

"And there's no obstacle to her recovery that you know of?" Mary Ann shook her head. "Well, Miss Mary Ann, we must just conclude that it's the natural wearing out of a good machine. And we'll do what we can."

When Mary Ann went back to her mother's room, she found her a little roused from the stupor in which she had been lying. The visit of her own doctor, the accustomed tendance, had touched some spring that set old wheels running. With the clairvoyance love so often gives to the sick-nurse, Mary Ann knew that she had something to say to her.

She sat by the bed and waited. A fluttering whisper came at last.

"Did you see Jane's hands?"

Mary Ann's mind, seeking desperately for a clue, flashed from the stains on her sister's hands, which she had vaguely set down to black currant jelly, to the acid smell in the kitchen--to the black sewing--to the forgotten shock of a year ago.

"They asked me where I'd like to lie--beside Pa or in the cemetery in town."

"It's their forehandedness, Ma. I never did know such a forehanded pair. Talk about meeting trouble half way--Selina'n'Jane don't wait for it to start out at all."

"Selina read out of the paper that bronchitis was nearly always fatal after seventy."

"Well, now, what will those papers say next? Do you know what I read out of our own _Advertiser_ the other day? That every woman over thirty has had at least one offer of marriage. Now, that's a lie, for I never had an offer in my life. I'm kind of glad I didn't, Ma, for I suppose I'd have took it; and you and me do have an awfully good time together, don't we?"

But her mother was not listening now; it had been a flash merely of the old self. Mary Ann looked around the room until she found Jane's lap-board with a pile of black sewing on it. She gathered up the carefully pressed pieces and poked them roughly in between a large clothes cupboard and the wall.

"There!" she said to herself, "it will be a while before they find that, and when they do they can call it Mary Ann's flighty way of redding up a room."

She heard her sisters whispering in the hall and went out to them. Selina was tying her bonnet-strings.

"I'm going home to do a lot of cooking," she said in an important undertone. "John's wrote to Ma's relatives in Iowa, and some of them's sure to come."

Mary Ann looked into the wrinkled face; the past weeks had added new lines of genuine grief to it, yet she could not help seeing that Selina found some strange pleasure in all these incidents of a last illness. The words she had meant to say seemed futile. She was turning to go into her mother's room again when an idea came to her.

"Don't go yet," she said. "I want to show you two something."

She went into her bedroom and returned in a few minutes with the crimson dress over her arm.

"I was getting it fitted when the news of Ma's sickness came, and I just put a waterproof over it. The seams have got a little ravelled. I thought maybe you two would help me top-sew them."

"Mary Ann----!"

"You're so much cleverer than me with the needle. I was having it made for--for--" Mary Ann could not trust her voice to tell what she had been having it made for--"for an occasion. It won't be needed now as soon as I expected, but you know, Selina'n'Jane, you always say yourselves there's nothing like taking time by the forelock."

"Mary Ann----"

"A few hours would finish it up if we all got at it. Oh, there's Ma coughing. I must run and get the pail of water and hot brick to steam up the room."

She threw the dress into her sister's hands and was gone. They stood looking at each other across it.

"_Poor_ Mary Ann!"

"She talked about an occasion. I don't know more'n one kind of occasion people get dresses like this for. Can she mean----?"

"At her age? Nonsense!"

"Dr. Corbett appears to think a pile of her. He's a widower----"

"Now you speak of it, Selina, he does look at her in an admiring sort of way. If there was anything of that kind in prospect--and of course she'd lay off black sooner----"

The sun came out and streamed through the high window upon the dress in their hands. It was like a drink of wine to look at it.

"There's no denying it's a handsome thing," Jane said. "It does seem a pity to have the edges ravel. We might finish it, anyway, and sew it up in a bag with camphor."

Through the gray languor that overlay Mrs. Colquhoun's consciousness, glints of crimson began to find their way. Now the spot of color was disappearing under Mary Ann's white apron; now it was in Jane's stained hands; now it was passing from Jane to Selina.

Then she heard Dr. Corbett say, as he handed Mary Ann a small parcel, "It's the first sewing-silk I ever bought, Miss Mary Ann, and I don't know whether it's a good match, but it's crimson, anyhow, Merrill gave me his word for that"; and when Mary Ann made a warning gesture towards the bed, the faint stirring of interest almost amounted to curiosity.

"What did he mean?" she asked, after the doctor had gone. Mary Ann bent down to catch the husky whisper. "The silk--what is it for?"

"You're a little stronger to-day, aren't you, Ma? I've a secret I meant to keep till you were well; but there! Wait till I get back and I'll tell you."