Part 3

Augusta did not answer. She looked straight towards the Cardinal, but he realized at once that she did not see him, that her vision went beyond him to someone or something to which she was evidently appealing for her answer. He saw her look change from one of pleading, bewildered question to one of instant, calmed assurance. The great man, watching the girl's face, was struck with the conviction that some one had spoken to the girl. He almost caught himself listening, as though the words might be escaping him.

When she spoke there was a matter-of-fact directness in her strange words that was so simple as to be startling.

"My mother's spirit," she said quietly, "is not bound by that body, by that place. She speaks to me. She tells me that it is right. I know."

The Parish Priest of New York looked gravely at the girl for a moment. Then he turned to look up through the unshaded window into the clear breadth of sky that showed so high above the city's walls. From bedside to confessional he had gone his round these many years past. And he had learned that there is more of the spirit in the teeming streets, in the crowded tenements, of the city than ever was in the open places, if one but had the vision and the ear for it. He had seen and heard many things for which he had not accounted.

Suddenly he turned to Wardwell, saying:

"Why do you wish to marry the young lady?"

"Because I love her," Wardwell answered so promptly and bluntly that the Cardinal smiled.

"Were you ever baptized in any church?" the latter asked, after a little pause.

"I do not think so."

"Have you heard, perhaps, that I have personally very strong objection to my people marrying those who are not Catholics?"

"I have heard you say it. Your Eminence must understand," Wardwell explained, "that some reporter hears nearly everything that you say in public."

"I am glad to know that that is your business," the Cardinal said briefly. "Some of my best friends through long years have been newspaper men of this town. They are men of wide and sympathetic understanding. Now," he went on, "has it occurred to you that I have probably good reasons for opposing such marriages as the one for which you ask?"

"I do not doubt you have good reasons, your Eminence."

"What might you think to be one of them?"

"I suppose there's enough to fight about," said Wardwell promptly--so promptly that he saw the Cardinal smiling, and felt himself blushing furiously under the boyish white skin.

"You seem to have acquired a working knowledge," said the aged man with his smile, "of--But let us hope that it is not so bad as you have been led to believe. There are other reasons, several of them," he continued in a different tone. "You will find them all good. But back of them all there is a very human, very practical one. It is this. The Catholic party considers himself bound until death by a divine law. The other party, in practice, hardly ever considers himself bound by anything but the law of the land, and a certain vague sense of justice. It is never fair," he ended gravely. "Never a fair partnership."

Wardwell was silent, thinking of the matter in a light in which it had not, as a fact, ever occurred to him. He knew well enough that the average man in his position would not and did not think that he bound himself to anything beyond that which was the custom of the society in which he lived.

"I will only ask you to remember and think of this, Mr. Wardwell. To a man of just mind it is well worth thinking of always. My secretary," he went on, as he touched a button, "will prepare the papers. You can then go to the city clerk and to your priest. If you should need help," he added to Augusta in parting, "in the matter of bringing your mother home, I hope that you will command me."

The secretary, a young priest with the face of a big, solemn eyed boy, came and conducted them to an outer office.

When they were again in the street, Wardwell faced Augusta and asked:

"Did you ever think of that, what the Cardinal said at the last?"

"No, I did not," she answered. "It wouldn't affect us at all, Jimmie?"

She had spoken so quickly and confidently that Wardwell thought that she had not understood what the Cardinal had said. But the next moment he knew that he was entirely mistaken. Augusta understood and accepted everything with steady, unflinching eyes.

She said:

"I'd never wish to keep even a kitten that wanted to go away from me."

* * * * *

In the evening of the day that they were married, Rose Wilding came home with them.

Augusta had managed to dress her into the outward semblance of her old self. And in everything but the subject of Augusta she seemed reasonable. That subject they did not press upon her. And when she wondered why her little daughter had not come to bring her, they merely said that Augusta would be waiting for her at home.

Augusta had made absolutely no changes in the house, trusting that the presence in its own place of every remembered thing would awaken in her mother the sense of security and home. And for a little time, as she watched her mother walking slowly about her own room, touching a curtain here, a pillow there, as had been always her busy way, the girl felt sure that it was going to have just that effect.

But she observed that her mother soon became restless. She kept glancing over her shoulder and sidewise at Augusta who sat in her own little low chair which from childhood had been her favorite seat, just below the big red post of her mother's bed. She was remembering now how it used to be the greatest glory of her day to sit and watch with adoring eyes the combing out of her mother great waves of wonderful dark brown hair. It was snow white now, but still abundant and strangely beautiful.

"Mamma," she said suddenly, "let me take your hair down and run it through my fingers. Remember, you used to say it always took away a headache."

Rose Wilding looked suspiciously over her shoulder. What was running in the poor disordered mind it is hard to say. But when she turned she spoke kindly and quietly.

"Don't you think it's time you were going back, child? Wont they be missing you--there?"

Poor Augusta's heart turned sick with failure. She threw herself down kneeling at her mother's feet, begging and crying:

"Mamma, mamma darling can't you remember! Try to remember. I'm your Augusta! Your little daughter! Augusta! _Augusta!_" she cried hysterically, trying in pitiful futility to pierce the cloud of her mother's mind by sheer loudness.

But Rose Wilding only smiled with a gentle patience, and lifted her up, petting her.

"There there, daughter, hush now, hush. I'll let you stay here. Though I wonder that they'd allow it."

Augusta ran out of the room and came down the long hall to the common sitting room, where she found Wardwell at the table reading. She fell into a chair at his side and dropped her head upon his arm where it lay extended on the table.

"Jimmie, Jimmie," she cried miserably, "it's no use! I've failed, failed!"

"No you haven't either," said Jimmie quickly, as he raised her head and lifted her face up to him. "Of course there's always a fly in the icebox, kid. But no one has ever failed when he's done all his part as you have. And at least you have her here where you can make her comfortable and can know what's happening to her."

"I know, Jimmie, I'm happy even for that. But I was so sure, so sure that she'd know me and be better right away."

"She is better," said Jimmie stoutly. "Her mind is at rest, except about you. She is not able to place you. There is something about you that she has never seen before. She does not know you."

He stopped short, struck by a sudden thought as he looked down with quick intensity upon the golden shot circle of Augusta's head and into the deep, pain clouded eyes.

When he spoke it was in the slow, rising voice of one who struggles toward a new and amazing conviction.

"She is right," he said in a low voice. "You are not her Augusta."

"Why Jimmie, Jimmie," the girl cried in a trembling voice. "Are you----? What can you mean?"

Wardwell seeing the quick leap of anguish in her eyes hurried to say lightly:

"Nothing at all, as per usual. Only, you see, when she went away, you were a little girl with a little curl. And now--she can't understand it--the little girl is a--woman."

Augusta put her hand softly into Wardwell's palm and said gently, soberly:

"Your woman."

Wardwell started as though a hot iron had touched him. The homely expression, in the way she had put it, and meant it, the gentle dignity of her complete surrender, went to his heart, and flashed up into his brain the revelation of the heart holiness that this little girl had brought today to the ceremony which, after all, had meant so little to him.

He closed his hand blindly over the little hand that lay in his, and bowed his head.

A slight rustling noise came from the hall, and Augusta leaping from her chair ran hastily from the room and down the hall.

She was in time to look through the railing of the stairs and see her mother disappearing down the stairs. She saw her mother look back in a frightened, furtive way; saw that she recognized her; and then saw that she turned to flee from her.

Augusta put her arm out blindly to the wall and leaned against it.

"Go, Jimmie, quick," she moaned. "She'd never come back for me. She'd only run faster and farther. She's running away--Running away from _me_."

Wardwell hurried down the stairs, and Augusta leaning over the railing heard him as he caught up with her mother on the lower landing.

"Surely," she heard him arguing genially, "you're not going out this kind of a night! It's going to rain cats and dogs in another five minutes."

"I can't stay here." The girl heard the hurried whisper. "It's that girl. They've set her here to watch me."

"No such thing!" Wardwell contended. "She's here--" His voice suddenly dropped to a whisper which Augusta could not understand. She listened with painful tenseness, but she could distinguish no words. After a little, however, she knew that Jimmie's talk was more steady--almost continuous; while her mother's whispers became hesitating and infrequent. Jimmie was winning. Augusta knew just what he was doing. He was telling one prodigous and consequential lie after another, until the poor fumbling mind with which he was contending should be completely turned around and would give in to his bidding like a bewildered child. She choked and almost cried aloud, for the pity of it, though she knew that Jimmie was doing the only thing possible. Then her mind wandered for a moment to another thought, and for an instant she trembled in a cold grip of fear. Would Jimmie ever, for any reason, find it necessary to use his--facility--upon herself.

At last she heard her mother laugh. Jimmie had won!

She ran quickly into her mother's sitting room and into the bedroom, shutting the door softly behind her. Then she went on into her own little room, which was fitted into a jutting corner of the building, and threw herself down on the bed. She did not know what she was going to do, but ever since Jimmie had said that, about her mother going away and leaving her a little girl, an idea had been crowding into her mind.

She heard her mother and Wardwell at the hall door and heard her mother inviting Jimmie into the sitting room for a little chat. Wardwell had always been a favorite with her mother, and she spoke in just the friendly, kindly way she would have spoken in the old days.

Then she heard her mother come into the big bedroom, probably to put down her hat and shawl. When Rose Wilding had gone out and shut the bedroom door, Augusta thought and acted quickly.

She drew from under her own bed the little old cot on which she had slept until she was a big girl. Carrying it out into the big room she carefully set it up at the foot of her mother's bed, where it had stood until Augusta had come to the dignity of a room of her own. Then, bringing bedding for it and fixing it in the old way, she undressed quickly and curled herself into it.

Through the closed door, in the silence of the house, for it was the time when nearly all the boarders were out, she could hear plainly nearly every word said in the outer room.

The rain--it had actually begun to rain a little--was on Wardwell's mind apparently, for he began a fresh story with:

"Do you remember the time of the Flood, Mrs. Wilding?"

"Well--not quite, Mr. Jimmie." And Augusta could almost feel her mother's amused chuckle through the dark. She had always loved fun. And although she herself did not talk a great deal she had always liked to hear the laughter and nonsense of young folks around her.

"Well, you know, that time, McCarty was up a tree. And along comes Noah, sailing, decks awash, and the rain pouring down in gutters.

"'Are ye takin' anny Irish this trip, Sor?' says McCarty.

"Noah looks at him with a weary eye. Says he, sorrowfully:

"'I am a sea-faring man, by preoccupation. I have on board two thousand, three hundred eighty one married couples. The name of this ship is TROUBLE. Irish--' he muttered '--Irish?'

"'Oh, have a heart, Noah,' says McCarty. 'Sure wan more can do little harm. Take me on.'

"'I wont,' says Noah.

"'You oant?' says McCarty.

"'I wont,' says Noah.

"'Well, ye can go to Blazes--It's only a shower, anyway.'"

Augusta, hysterically stuffing the bed clothes against her mouth, heard her mother's hearty, pleasant laugh ring out. And for an instant she thought that her own little play was real; that she was, indeed, the little girl of other years lying in her cot and listening to the grown folks in the other room.

Then her own laughter turned, as laughter will, to hot, choking tears of fear and trepidation that burned her throat.

The talk outside ran on pleasantly, naturally; just such an hour as Wardwell and one or two others of the boarders had often spent with her mother. Wardwell loved to tell stories, to run on about himself, about his lack of money--it was a tradition of the house, founded probably on his own authority, that he had but three socks, one of which he washed every night--about the scrapes which he was constantly getting into and getting out of. He never laughed at the end of one of his own tales, but always before beginning one he would break out with a short, provoking laugh to himself, as though he had just heard a good thing.

It was all so natural, so real, that Augusta, her mind unconsciously relaxing from the strains of the day, caught herself almost falling asleep. She heard one after another of the boarders come up the stairs and stop for a moment, at the door of the room where the two chatted, for a rather timid and curious word or two with the mistress of the house. But with Rose Wilding there was nothing except the usual and the ordinary. She was in her own house, her own room, doing as she had done on any other evening. Her house was making its orderly, routine way to bed.

Finally Wardwell rose, saying:

"Well, Mrs. Wilding, it's time honest folk were in bed, and all rogues were turned out. I'm going before I'm turned out."

"Oh, Mr. Jimmie, there's worse than you in the world. But I suppose it's late. I _am_ tired."

Augusta heard the door close behind Wardwell, and her mother came straight to the bedroom door and pushed it wide open. The full light from the door fell straight across the cot where Augusta lay.

She did not stir, pretending to be asleep. She heard her mother's startled gasp of joy. Then she heard her hurry to the outer door and call to Wardwell:

"Oh, Mr. Jimmie, Mr. Jimmie, come back! Come back!"

Wardwell came running back, and Rose Wilding in a choking whisper told him:

"My little darling! My little Pigeon-pie! She's here! She's here, just where I left her! Oh, Dear Heart of God, how I missed her! Come and see, she's sleeping," she whispered.

Wardwell came quietly with her to the door and looked in rather timidly. He did not know quite what to expect.

He saw a little cot, and curled up in it there was what seemed a little girl sleeping. Her loose, tumbling hair had fallen all about the face, and one little hand--a hand upon which there was no ring--held a strand of it, as though the little girl had been playing with her hair when she fell asleep.

He knew it was his wife. But, remembering his own first startled impression, he did not wonder that Rose Wilding, her mind straying in its pain, had gone back through the years to the little Augusta that had been.

Rose Wilding went gently over to the cot and knelt beside it whispering softly. Wardwell stole out of the room and closed the outer door quietly behind him.

Augusta scarcely dared breathe while her mother knelt bending over her. Her little play had succeeded, so far as to set her mother's heart at ease for the moment, but she was in mortal terror of what the effect would be if her mother should realize that she was being deceived.

After what seemed an eternity of anxiety, she heard her mother rise, go out quietly, lock the hall door, and turn out the light. Then she came back and moved about quietly in the dark, preparing for bed.

She did not come to the cot again but got quietly into bed, and in a few minutes Augusta listening to her breathing knew that she had fallen asleep almost instantly like a tired, contented child.

When she was sure that her mother was sleeping soundly, Augusta rose, found a dressing robe and slippers, and stole like a thief out into the hall.

Wardwell was in the common sitting room, alone. He did not hear her coming. He was reading, and she stood a moment in the doorway looking at him, before she said:

"Jimmie."

He looked up and said, as though he had the words all ready studied and framed:

"That was nothing less than inspiration, dear."

"I do not know," said Augusta hesitatingly. "I was very frightened. Is it--right?"

"Yes," said Wardwell simply. "It's right. However it is in the daytime, when you're dressed, she'll never leave this house so long as she hopes to find you there, like that, at night."

"Then--Good night, Jimmie."

"Good night, dear."

She turned away a step or two. Then she turned quickly back to the door and said:

"Jimmie."

"Yes, dear."

"Sometime, when you need it badly, God is going to be _very_ good to you."

And she was gone.

III

Rose Wilding did not rise from her bed the next day, nor, in the daytime, for many days. When she had come home in the evening she had looked, to the casual eye, as robust as ever. But in the morning it was plain that she had fallen into a complete mental and physical collapse.

It seemed that she must have gone on upon the sheer strength of terror and worry, until, once finding the little girl, as she thought, the stimulus was gone; and her strength and her interest in life had gone with it. She lay all day like one in a partial doze, evidently not asleep, but paying no attention to anybody or anything about her. Augusta she noticed not at all, except to take from her the food that she brought and to submit passively to her tidying and washing. Wardwell she recognized with a brief, passing glimmer of her old flashing smile, but not even he could arouse her more than momentarily. To her own doctor, whom Augusta had called in, she answered quietly, and without seeming to think that any other explanation was necessary, that she was resting and that she did not think that she would get up.

At night when the house had settled into its bedtime quiet, Augusta stole into the little cot at the foot of her mother's bed, and waited.

After a little she heard her mother stir softly in the bed, and then heard her get stealthily out to the floor. She came straight to the little cot, and, as she knelt by it, Augusta could feel her warm breath upon her own tumbled hair. Then, satisfied, she stole softly back into bed and went sound asleep.

This was the first day of the new life for Augusta. And every day that followed through the fall and winter was exactly like it. It seemed that Rose Wilding lived through the day just waiting for the night to come, that she might steal from her bed to find her little girl. She never spoke to Augusta except to answer a direct question. She submitted in a gentle, kindly way to Augusta's every ministration. She smiled at Wardwell and always knew him. But when he would time and again, indicating Augusta, ask who this girl was, she always answered with a deprecating "Hush!" and a pitying glance at Augusta which said plainly that he should not ask, that he knew well enough where the girl had come from and he ought to know better than to hurt her feelings by bringing it up. He asked the question often in a good-hearted effort to make her realize that this was Augusta. But, one day, after he had asked it, he saw Augusta's face as she caught her mother's sidelong look. He did not ask the question again.

Gradually the three settled to an acceptance of the state of affairs as they existed in the mind of Rose Wilding. By day, Augusta was the girl that had followed Rose Wilding from "that place." At night, the little Augusta came from somewhere and slept in her place at the foot of her mother's bed.

The change that came over Rose Wilding was one that to the outer eye was wholly inexplicable. Though that there was a change was plain to the most casual look. Probably it was to the casual, unconcerned eye that the change was most startling.

One day, when Rose Wilding had been some weeks at home, a new boarder, a Mrs. Barron, a nervous, high-strung, over-worked woman, head of department in one of the great retail stores, came into the sitting room to speak to Augusta. She glanced accidentally into the bedroom and straight into the eyes of Rose Wilding whom she had never before seen.

Mrs. Barron fainted.

Augusta and Wardwell, accustomed to seeing Rose Wilding day by day, could not realize the extent of the change that had come over her. To them she was today practically as she had been yesterday. But to a stranger the picture of the large handsome woman, her face blanched now by hidden disease to a transparent pearl white, the skin smooth and unlined as a growing baby's, her pallor doubled by the white of the bed and the enamel that covered every object in the room, was in all a sight to arouse a nameless, creeping dread of something present but unseen.

Augusta had taken a few months of hospital training during the year past, and her care of her mother became not only a cult and a religion but almost a fanatical passion. She had turned the room into her ideal of a hospital room. She had painted and enamelled everything so that all could be scrubbed and washed down with disinfectants. She would have nothing in the room that was not a pure white. She dressed the bed and her mother in the snowiest things she could lay hand to.

The effect was not at all what she had had in mind. To herself, living as she did so close to her mother, the room was just the cheeriest and sweetest abode that could be made for a beloved sick one. But her mother's wondering, childlike eyes, as they looked out unseeing from under the circle of completely blanched hair above them upon the room that was now her world, did not have the look familiar to the sick room. They were eyes that looking, and seeing not, yet dealt with strange thing that showed through a curtain.

Augusta, from long watching, from unending longing and perpetual defeat, had worn thin the coarser material covering that held the living, burning spirit within her. As her mother seemed to remove day by day into deeper and deeper places of the soul's isolation, Augusta seemed ever to follow her.