Chapter 26

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_ Chapter XXVI

Maria, after that, went on her way as before. She saw, without the slightest qualm, incredible as it may seem, George Ramsey devoted to Lily. She even entered without any shrinking into Lily's plans for her trousseau, and repeatedly went shopping with her. She began embroidering a bureau-scarf and table-cover for Lily's room in the Ramsey house. It had been settled that the young couple were to have the large front chamber, and Mrs. Merrill's present to Lily was a set of furniture for it. Mrs. Ramsey's old-fashioned walnut set was stowed away. Maria even went with Mrs. Merrill to purchase the furniture. Mrs. Merrill had an idea, which could not be subdued, that Maria would have liked George Ramsey for herself, and she took a covert delight in pressing Maria into this service, and descanting upon the pleasant life in store for her daughter. Maria understood with a sort of scorn Mrs. Merrill's thought; but she said to herself that if it gave her pleasure, let her think so. She had a character which could leave people to their mean and malicious delights for very contempt.

"Well, I guess Lily's envied by a good many girls in Amity," said Mrs. Merrill, almost undisguisedly, when she and Maria had settled upon a charming set of furniture.

"I dare say," replied Maria. "Mr. Ramsey seems a very good young man."

"He's the salt of the earth," said Mrs. Merrill. She gave a glance of thwarted malice at Maria's pretty face as they were seated side by side in the trolley-car on their way home that day. Her farthest imagination could discern no traces of chagrin, and Maria looked unusually well that day in a new suit. However, she consoled herself by thinking that Maria was undoubtedly like her aunt, who would die before she let on that she was hit, and that the girl, under her calm and smiling face, was stung with envy and slighted affection.

Lily asked Maria to be her maid of honor. She planned to be married in church, but George Ramsey unexpectedly vetoed the church wedding. He wished a simple wedding at Lily's house. He even demurred at the bridal-gown and veil, but Lily had her way about that. Maria consented with no hesitation to be her maid of honor, although she refused to allow Mrs. Merrill to purchase her dress. She purchased some white cloth, and had it cut and fitted, and she herself made it, embroidering it with white silk, sitting up far into the night after school. But, after all, she was destined not to wear the dress to Lily's wedding and not to be her maid of honor.

The wedding was to be the first week of Maria's spring vacation, and she unexpectedly received word from home that her father was not well, and that she had better go home as soon as her school was finished. Her father himself wrote. He wrote guardedly, evidently without Ida's knowledge. He said that, unless her heart was particularly set upon attending the wedding, he wished she would come home; that her vacation was short, at the best, that he had not seen her for a long time, and that he did not feel quite himself some days. Maria read between the lines, and so did her aunt Maria, to whom she read the letter.

"Your father's sicker than he lets on," Aunt Maria said, bluntly. "You'd better go. You don't care anything particular about going to that Merrill girl's wedding. She can get Fanny Ellwell for her maid of honor. That dress Fanny wore at Eva Granger's wedding will do for her to wear. Your dress will come in handy next summer. You had better go home."

Maria sat soberly looking at the letter. "I am afraid father is worse than he says," she said.

"I know he is. Harry Edgham wasn't ever very strong, and I'll warrant his wife has made him go out when he didn't feel equal to it, and she has had stacks of company, and he must have had to strain every nerve to meet expenses, poor man! You'd better go, Maria."

"Of course, I am going," replied Maria.

That evening she went over and told Lily that she could not be her maid of honor, that her father was sick, and she would be obliged to go home as soon as school closed. George Ramsey was calling, and Lily's face had a lovely pink radiance. One could almost seem to see the kisses of love upon it. George acted a little perturbed at sight of Maria. He remained silent during Lily's torrent of regrets and remonstrances, but he followed Maria to the door and said to her how sorry he was that her father was ill.

"I hope it is nothing serious," he said.

"Thank you," said Maria. "I hope not, but I don't think my father is very strong, and I feel that I ought to go."

"Of course," said George. "We shall be sorry to miss you, but, if your father is ill, you ought to go."

"Do you think one day would make any difference?" said Lily, pleadingly, putting up her lovely face at Maria.

"It would mean three days, you know, dear," Maria said.

"Of course it would," said George; "and Miss Edgham is entirely right, Lily."

"I don't want Fanny Ellwell one bit for maid of honor," Lily said, poutingly.

Maria did not pay any attention. She was thinking anxiously of her father. She realized that he must be very ill or he would not have written her as he had done. It was not like Harry Edgham to deprive any one of any prospective pleasure, and he had no reason to think that being maid of honor at this wedding was anything but a pleasure to Maria. She felt that the illness must be something serious. Her school was to close in three days, and she was almost too impatient to wait.

"Ida Edgham ought to be ashamed of herself for not writing and letting you know that your father was sick before," said Aunt Maria. "She and Lily Merrill are about of a piece."

"Maybe father didn't want her to," said Maria. "Father knew my school didn't close until next Thursday. If I thought he was very ill I would try to get a substitute and start off before."

"But I know your father wouldn't have written for you to come unless he wasn't well and wanted to see you," said Aunt Maria. "I shouldn't be a mite surprised, too, if he suspected that Ida would write you not to come, and thought he'd get ahead of her."

Aunt Maria was right. In the next mail came a letter from Ida, saying that she supposed Maria would not think she could come home for such a short vacation, especially a she had to stay a little longer in Amity for the wedding, and how sorry they all were, and how they should look forward to the long summer vacation.

"She doesn't say a word about father's being ill," said Maria.

"Of course she doesn't! She knew perfectly well that if she did you would go home whether or no; or maybe she hasn't got eyes for anything aside from herself to see that he is sick."

Maria grew so uneasy about her father that she engaged a substitute and went home two days before her vacation actually commenced. She sent a telegram, saying that she was coming, and on what train she should arrive. Evelyn met her at the station in Edgham. She had grown, and was nearly as tall as Maria, although only a child. She was fairly dancing with pleasurable expectation on the platform, with the uncertain grace of a butterfly over a rose, when Maria caught sight of her. Evelyn was a remarkably beautiful little girl. She had her mother's color and dimples, with none of her hardness. Her forehead, for some odd reason, was high and serious, like Maria's own, and Maria's own mother's. Her dark hair was tied with a crisp white bow, and she was charmingly dressed in red from head to foot--a red frock, red coat, and red hat. Ida could at least plead, in extenuation of her faults of life, that she had done her very best to clothe those around her with beauty and grace. When Maria got off the car, Evelyn made one leap towards her, and her slender, red-clad arms went around her neck. She hugged and kissed her with a passionate fervor odd to see in a child. Her charming face was all convulsed with emotion.

"Oh, sister!" she said. "Oh, sister!"

Maria kissed her fondly. "Sister's darling," she said. Then she put her gently away. "Sister has to get out her trunk-check and see to getting a carriage," she said.

"Mamma has gone to New York," said Evelyn, "and papa has not got home yet. He comes on the next train. He told me to come and meet you."

Maria, after she had seen to her baggage and was seated in the livery carriage with Evelyn, asked how her father was. "Is father ill, dear?" she said.

Evelyn looked at her with surprise. "Why, no, sister, I don't think so," she replied. "Mamma hasn't said anything about it, and I haven't heard papa say anything, either."

"Does he go to New York every day?"

"Yes, of course," said Evelyn. The little girl had kept looking at her sister with loving, adoring eyes. Now she suddenly cuddled up close to her and thrust her arm through Maria's. "Oh, sister!" she said, half sobbingly again.

"There, don't cry, sister's own precious," Maria said, kissing the little, glowing face on her shoulder. She realized all at once how hard the separation had been from her sister. "Are you glad to have me home?" she asked.

For answer Evelyn only clung the closer. There was a strange passion in the look of her big eyes as she glanced up at her sister. Maria was too young herself to realize it, but the child had a dangerous temperament. She had inherited none of her mother's hard phlegmaticism. She was glowing and tingling with emotion and life and feeling in every nerve and vein. As she clung to her sister she trembled all over her lithe little body with the violence of her affection for her and her delight at meeting her again. Evelyn had made a sort of heroine of her older sister. Her imagination had glorified her, and now the sight of her did not disappoint her in the least. Evelyn thought Maria, in her brown travelling-gown and big, brown-feathered hat, perfectly beautiful. She was proud of her with a pride which reached ecstasy; she loved her with a love which reached ecstasy.

"So father goes to New York every day?" said Maria again.

"Yes," said Evelyn. Then she repeated her ecstatic "Oh, sister!"

To Maria herself the affection of the little girl was inexpressibly grateful. She said to herself that she had something, after all. She thought of Lily Merrill, and reflected how much more she loved Evelyn than she had loved George Ramsey, how much more precious a little, innocent, beautiful girl was than a man. She felt somewhat reassured about her father's health. It did not seem to her that he could be very ill if he went to New York every day.

"Mamma has gone to the matinee," said Evelyn, nestling luxuriously, like a kitten, against Maria. "She said she would bring me some candy. Mamma wore her new blue velvet gown, and she looked lovely, but"--Evelyn hesitated a second, then she whispered with her lips close to Maria's ear--"I love you best."

"Evelyn, darling, you must not say such things," said Maria, severely. "Of course, you love your own mother best."

"No, I don't," persisted Evelyn. "Maybe it's wicked, but I don't. I love papa as well as I do you, but I don't love mamma so well. Mamma gets me pretty things to wear, and she smiles at me, but I don't love her so much. I can't help it."

"That is a naughty little girl," said Maria.

"I can't help it," said Evelyn. "Mamma can't love anybody as hard as I can. I can love anybody so hard it makes me shake all over, and I feel ill, but mamma can't. I love you so, Maria, that I don't feel well."

"Nonsense!" said Maria, but she kissed Evelyn again.

"I don't--honest," said Evelyn. Then she added, after a second's pause, "If I tell you something, won't you tell mamma--honest?"

"I can't promise if I don't know what it is," said Maria, with her school-teacher manner.

"It isn't any harm, but mamma wouldn't understand. She never felt so, and she wouldn't understand. You won't tell her, will you, sister?"

"No, I guess not," said Maria.

"Promise."

"Well, I won't tell her."

Evelyn looked up in her sister's face with her wonderful dark eyes, a rose flush spread over her face. "Well, I am in love," she whispered.

Maria laughed, although she tried not to. "Well, with whom, dear?" she asked.

"With a boy. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"

"No, I don't think it is very wrong," replied Maria, trying to restrain her smile.

"His first name is pretty, but his last isn't so very," Evelyn said, regretfully. "His first name is Ernest. Don't you think that is a pretty name?"

"Very pretty."

"But his last name is only Jenks," said Evelyn, with a mortified air. "That is horrid, isn't it?"

"Nobody can help his name," said Maria, consolingly.

"Of course he can't. Poor Ernest isn't to blame because his mother married a man named Jenks; but I wish she hadn't. If we ever get married, I don't want to be called Mrs. Jenks. Don't people ever change their names, sister?"

"Sometimes, I believe."

"Well, I shall not marry him unless he changes his name. But he is such a pretty boy. He looks across the school-room at me, and once, when I met him in the vestibule, and there was nobody else there, he asked me to kiss him, and I did."

"I don't think you ought to kiss boys," said Maria.

"I would rather kiss him than another girl," said Evelyn, looking up at her sister with the most limpid passion, that of a child who has not the faintest conception of what passion means.

"Well, sister would rather you did not," said Maria.

"I won't if you don't want me to," said Evelyn, meekly. "That was quite a long time ago. It is not very likely I shall meet him anywhere where we could kiss each other, anyway. Of course, I don't really love him as much as I do you and papa. I would rather he died than you or papa; but I am in love with him--you know what I mean, sister?"

"I wouldn't think any more about it, dear," said Maria.

"I like to think about him," said Evelyn, simply. "I like to sit whole hours and think about him, and make sort of stories about us, you know--how me meet somewhere, and he tells me how much he loves me, and how we kiss each other again. It makes me happy. I go to sleep so. Do you think it is wrong, sister?"

Maria remembered her own childhood. "Perhaps it isn't wrong, exactly, dear," she said, "but I wouldn't, if I were you. I think it is better not."

"Well, I will try not to," said Evelyn, with a sigh. "He told Amy Jones I was the prettiest girl in school. Of course we couldn't be married for a long time, and I wouldn't be Mrs. Jenks. But, now you've come home, maybe I sha'n't want to think so much about him."

Maria found new maids when she reached home. Ida did not keep her domestics very long. However, nobody could say that was her fault in this age when man-servants and maid-servants buzz angrily, like bees, over household tasks and are constantly hungering for new fields.

"We have had two cooks and two new second-girls since you went away," Evelyn said, when they stood waiting for the front door to be opened, and the man with Maria's trunk stood behind them. "The last second-girl we had stole"--Evelyn said the last in a horrified whisper--"and the last cook couldn't cook. The cook we have now is named Agnes, and the second-girl is Irene. Agnes lets me go out in the kitchen and make candy, and she always makes a little cake for me; but I don't like Irene. She says things under her breath when she thinks nobody will hear, and she makes up my bed so it is all wrinkly. I shouldn't be surprised if she stole, too."

Then the door opened and a white-capped maid, with a rather pretty face, evidently of the same class as Gladys Mann, appeared.

"This is my sister, Miss Maria, Irene," said Evelyn.

The maid nodded and said something inarticulate.

Maria said "How do you do?" to her, and asked her to tell the man where to carry the trunk.

When the trunk was in Maria's old room, and Maria had smoothed her hair and washed her face and hands, she and Evelyn sat down in the parlor and waited. The parlor looked to Maria, after poor Aunt Maria's sparse old furnishings, more luxurious than she had remembered it. In fact, it had been improved. There were some splendid palms in the bay-window, and some new articles of furniture. The windows, also, had been enlarged, and were hung with new curtains of filmy lace, with thin, red silk over them. The whole room seemed full of rosy light.

"I wish you would ask Irene to fix the hearth fire," Evelyn had said to Maria when they entered the room, which did seem somewhat chilly.

Maria asked the girl to do so, and when she had gone and the fire was blazing Evelyn said:

"I didn't like to ask her, sister. She doesn't realize that I am not a baby, and she does not like it. So I never ask her to do anything except when mamma is here. Irene is afraid of mamma."

Maria laughed and looked at the clock. "How long will it be before father comes, do you think, dear?" she asked.

"Papa comes home lately at five o'clock. I guess he will be here very soon now; but mamma won't be home before half-past seven. She has gone with the Voorhees to the matinee. Do you know the Voorhees, sister?"

"No, dear."

"I guess they came to Edgham after you went away. They bought that big house on the hill near the church. They are very rich. There are Mr. Voorhees and Mrs. Voorhees and their little boy. He doesn't wear long stockings in the coldest weather; his legs are quite bare from a little above his shoes to his knees. I should think he would be cold, but mamma says it is very stylish. He is a pretty little boy, but I don't like him; he looks too much like Mr. Voorhees, and I don't like him. He always acts as if he were laughing at something inside, and you don't know what it is. Mrs. Voorhees is very handsome, not quite so handsome as mamma, but very handsome, and she wears beautiful clothes and jewels. They often ask mamma to go to the theatre with them, and they are here quite a good deal. They have dinner-parties and receptions, and mamma goes. We had a dinner-party here last week."

"Doesn't father go to the theatre with them?" asked Maria.

"No, he never goes. I don't know whether they ask him or not. If they do, he doesn't go. I guess he would rather stay at home. Then I don't believe papa would want to leave me alone until the late train, for often the cook and Irene go out in the evening."

Maria looked anxiously at her little sister, who was sitting as close to her as she could get in the divan before the fire. "Does papa look well?" she asked.

"Why, yes, I guess so. He looks just the way he always has. I haven't heard him say he wasn't well, nor mamma, and he hasn't had the doctor, and I haven't seen him take any medicine. I guess he's well."

Maria looked at the clock, a fine French affair, which had been one of Ida's wedding gifts, standing swinging its pendulum on the shelf between a Tiffany vase and a bronze. "Father must be home soon now, if he comes on that five-clock train," she said.

"Yes, I guess he will."

In fact, it was a very few minutes before a carriage stopped in front of the house and Evelyn called out: "There he is! Papa has come!"

Maria did not dare look out of the window. She arose with trembling knees and went out into the hall as the front door opened. She saw at the first glance that her father had changed--that he did not look well. And yet it was difficult to say why he did not look well. He had not lost flesh, at least not perceptibly; he was not very pale, but on his face was the expression of one who is looking his last at the things of this world. The expression was at once stern and sad and patient. When he saw Maria, however, the look disappeared for the time. His face, which had not yet lost its boyish outlines, fairly quivered between smiles and tears. He caught Maria in his arms.

"Father's blessed child!" he whispered in her ear.

"Oh, father," half sobbed Maria, "why didn't you send for me before? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Hush, darling!" Harry said, with a glance at Evelyn, who stood looking on with a puzzled, troubled expression on her little face. Harry took off his overcoat, and they all went into the parlor. "That fire looks good," said Harry, drawing close to it.

"I got Maria to ask Irene to make it," Evelyn said, in her childish voice.

"That was a good little girl," said Harry. He sat down on the divan, with a daughter on each side of him. Maria nestled close to her father. With an effort she kept her quivering face straight. She dared not look in his face again. A knell seemed ringing in her ears from her own conviction, a voice of her inner consciousness, which kept reiterating, "Father is going to die, father is going to die." Maria knew little of illness, but she felt that she could not mistake that expression. But her father talked quite gayly, asking her about her school and Aunt Maria and Uncle Henry and his wife. Maria replied mechanically. Finally she mustered courage to say:

"How are you feeling, father? Are you well?"

"I am about the same as when you went away, dear," Harry replied, and that expression of stern, almost ineffable patience deepened on his face. He smiled directly, however, and asked Evelyn what train her mother had taken.

"She won't be home until the seven-thirty train," said Harry, "and there is no use in our waiting dinner. You must be hungry, Maria. Evelyn, darling, speak to Irene. I hear her in the dining-room."

Evelyn obeyed, and Harry gave his orders that dinner should be served as soon as possible. The girl smiled at him with a coquettish air.

"Irene is pleasanter to papa than to anybody else," Evelyn observed, meditatively, when Irene had gone out. "I guess girls are apt to be pleasanter to gentlemen than to little girls."

Harry laughed and kissed the child's high forehead. "Little girls are just as well off if they don't study out other people's peculiarities too much," he said.

"They are very interesting," said Evelyn, with an odd look at him, yet an entirely innocent look.

Maria was secretly glad that this first evening She was not there, that she could dine alone with her father and Evelyn. It was a drop of comfort, and yet the awful knell never ceased ringing in her ears--"Father is going to die, father is going to die." Maria made an effort to eat, because her father watched her anxiously.

"You are not as stout as you were when you went away, precious," he said.

"I am perfectly well," said Maria.

"Well, I must say you do look well," said Harry, looking admiringly at her. He admired his little Evelyn, but no other face in the world upon which he was soon to close his eyes forever was quite so beautiful to him as Maria's. "You look very much as your own mother used to do," he said.

"Was Maria's mamma prettier than my mamma?" asked Evelyn, calmly, without the least jealousy. She looked scrutinizingly at Maria, then at her father. "I think Maria is a good deal prettier than mamma, and I suppose, of course, her mamma must have been better-looking than mine," said she, answering her own question, to Harry's relief. But she straightway followed one embarrassing question with another. "Did you love Maria's mamma better than you do my mamma?" she asked.

Maria came to her father's relief. "That is not a question for little girls to ask, dear," said she.

"I don't see why," said Evelyn. "Little girls ought to know things. I supposed that was why I was a little girl, in order to learn to know everything. I should have been born grown up if it hadn't been for that."

"But you must not ask such questions, precious," said Maria. "When you are grown up you will see why."

Harry insisted upon Evelyn's going to bed directly after dinner, although she pleaded hard to be allowed to sit up until her mother returned. Harry wished for at least a few moments alone with Maria. So Evelyn went off up-stairs, after teary kisses and good-nights, and Maria was left alone with her father in the parlor.

"You are not well, father?" Maria said, immediately after Evelyn had closed the door.

"No, dear," replied Harry, simply.

Maria retained her self-composure very much as her mother might have done. A quick sense of the necessity of aiding her father, of supporting him spiritually, came over her.

"What doctor have you seen, father?" she asked.

"The doctor here and three specialists in New York."

"And they all agreed?"

"Yes, dear."

Maria looked interrogatively at her father. Her face was very white and shocked, but it did not quiver. Harry answered the look.

"I may have to give up almost any day now," he said, with an odd sigh, half of misery, half of relief.

"Does Ida know?" asked Maria.

"No, dear, she does not suspect. I thought there was no need of distressing her. I wanted to tell you while I was able, because--" Harry hesitated, then he continued: "Father wanted to tell you how sorry he was not to make any better provision for you," he said, pitifully. "He didn't want you to think it was because he cared any the less for you. But--soon after I married Ida--well, I realized how helpless she would be, especially after Evelyn was born, and I had my life insured for her benefit. A few years after I tried to get a second policy for your benefit, but it was too late. Father hasn't been well for quite a long time."

"I hope you don't think I care about any money," Maria cried, with sudden passion. "I can take care of myself. It is _you_ I think of." Maria began to weep, then restrained herself, but she looked accusingly and distressedly at her father.

"I had to settle the house on her, too," said Harry, painfully. "But I felt sure at the time--she said so--that you would always have your home here."

"That is all right, father," said Maria.

"All father can do for his first little girl, the one he loves best of all," said Harry, "is to leave her a little sum he has saved and put in the savings-bank here in her name. It is not much, dear."

"It is more than I want. I don't want anything. All I want is you!" cried Maria. She had an impulse to rush to her father, to cling about his neck and weep her very heart out, but she restrained herself. She saw how unutterably weary her father looked, and she realized that any violent emotion, even of love, might be too much for his strength. She knew, too, that her father understood her, that she cared none the less because she restrained herself. Maria would never know, luckily for her, how painfully and secretly poor Harry had saved the little sum which he had placed in the bank to her credit; how he had gone without luncheons, without clothes, without medicines even how he had possibly hastened the end by his anxiety for her welfare.

Suddenly carriage-wheels were heard, and Harry straightened himself. "That is Ida," he said. Then he rose and opened the front door, letting a gust of frosty outside air enter the house, and presently Ida came in. She was radiant, the most brilliant color on her hard, dimpled cheeks. The blank dark light of her eyes, and her set smile, were just as Maria remembered them. She was magnificent in her blue velvet, with her sable furs and large, blue velvet hat, with a blue feather floating over the black waves of her hair. Maria said to herself that she was certainly a beauty, that she was more beautiful than ever. She greeted Maria with the most faultless manner; she gave her her cool red cheek to be kissed, and made the suitable inquiries as to her journey, her health, and the health of her relatives in Amity. When Harry said something about dinner, she replied that she had dined with the Voorhees in the Pennsylvania station, since they had missed the train and had some time on their hands. She removed her wraps and seated herself before the fire.

When at last Maria went to her own room, she was both pleased and disturbed to find Evelyn in her bed. She had wished to be free to give way to her terrible grief. Evelyn, however, waked just enough to explain that she wanted to sleep with her, and threw one slender arm over her, and then sank again into the sound sleep of childhood. Maria lay sobbing quietly, and her sister did not awaken at all. It might have been midnight when the door of the room was softly opened and light flared across the ceiling. Maria turned, and Ida stood in the doorway. She had on a red wrapper, and she held a streaming candle. Her black hair floated around her beautiful face, which had not lost its color or its smile, although what she said might reasonably have caused it to do so.

"Your father does not seem quite well," she said to Maria. "I have sent Irene and the cook for the doctor. If you don't mind, I wish you would get up and slip on a wrapper and come into my room." Ida spoke softly for fear of waking Evelyn, whom she had directly seen in Maria's bed when she opened the door.

Maria sprang up, got a wrapper, put it on over her night-gown, thrust her feet into slippers, and followed Ida across the hall. Harry lay on the bed, seemingly unconscious.

"I can't seem to rouse him," said Ida. She spoke quite placidly.

Maria went close to her father and put her ear to his mouth. "He is breathing," she whispered, tremulously.

Ida smiled. "Oh yes," she said. "I don't think it anything serious. It may be indigestion."

Then Maria turned on her. "Indigestion!" she whispered. "Indigestion! He is dying. He has been dying a long time, and you haven't had sense enough to see it. You haven't loved him enough to see it. What made you marry my father if you didn't love him?"

Ida looked at Maria, and her face seemed to freeze into a smiling mask.

"He is dying!" Maria repeated, in a frenzy, yet still in a whisper.

"Dying? What do you know about it?" Ida asked, with icy emphasis.

"I know. He has seen three specialists besides the doctor here."

"And he told you instead of me?"

"He told me because he knew I loved him," said Maria. She was as white as death herself, and she trembled from head to foot with strange, stiff tremors. Her blue eyes fairly blazed at her step-mother.

Suddenly the sick man began to breathe stertorously. Even Ida started at that. She glanced nervously towards the bed. Little Evelyn, in her night-gown, her black fleece of hair fluffing around her face like a nimbus of shadow, came and stood in the doorway.

"What is the matter with papa?" she whispered, piteously.

"He is asleep, that is all, and breathing hard," replied her mother. "Go back to bed."

"Go back to bed, darling," said Maria.

"What is the matter?" asked Evelyn. She burst into a low, frightened wail.

"Go back to bed this instant, Evelyn," said her mother, and the child fled, whimpering.

Maria stood close to her father. Ida seated herself in a chair beside the table on which the lamp stood. Neither of them spoke again. The dying man continued to breathe his deep, rattling breath, the breath of one who is near the goal of life and pants at the finish of the race. The cook, a large Irishwoman, put her face inside the door.

"The doctor is comin' right away," said she. Then in the same breath she muttered, looking at poor Harry, "Oh, me God!" and fled, doubtless to pray for the poor man's soul.

Then the doctor's carriage-wheels were heard, and he came up-stairs, ushered by Irene, who stood in the doorway, listening and looking with a sort of alien expression, as if she herself were immortal, and sneered and wondered at it all.

Ida greeted the doctor in her usual manner. "Good-evening, doctor," she said, smiling. "I am sorry to have disturbed you at this hour, but Mr. Edgham has an acute attack of indigestion and I could not rouse him, and I thought it hardly wise to wait until morning."

The doctor, who was an old man, unshaven and grim-faced, nodded and went up to the bed. He did not open his medicine-case after he had looked at Harry.

"I suppose you can give him something, doctor?" Ida said.

"There is nothing that mortal man can do, madam," said the doctor, surlily. He disliked Ida Edgham, and yet he felt apologetic towards her that he could do nothing. He in reality felt testily apologetic towards all mankind that he could not avert death at last.

Ida's brilliant color faded then; she ceased to smile. "I think I should have been told," she said, with a sort of hard indignation.

The doctor said nothing. He stood holding Harry's hand, his fingers on the pulse.

"You surely do not mean me to understand that my husband is dying?" said Ida.

"He cannot last more than a few hours, madam," replied the doctor, with pitilessness, yet still with the humility of one who has failed in a task.

"I think we had better have another doctor at once," said Ida. "Irene, go down street to the telegraph operator and tell him to send a message for Dr. Lameth."

"He has been consulted, and also Dr. Green and Dr. Anderson, not four weeks ago, and we all agree," said the doctor, with a certain defiance.

"Go, Irene," said Ida.

Irene went out of the room, but neither she nor the cook left the house.

"The madam said to send a telegram," Irene told the cook, "but the doctor said it was no use, and I ain't goin' to stir out a step again to-night. I'm afraid."

The cook, who was weeping beside the kitchen table, hardly seemed to hear. She wept profusely and muttered surreptitiously prayers on her rosary for poor Harry's soul, which passed as day dawned. _

Read next: Chapter 27

Read previous: Chapter 25

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