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Page 59
She might have stood there and brought back all those dead birthday
nights, so did he live them over. But none could know it; for he did not
speak, and the frown knotted darkly on his forehead. Martha Ryck looked
up at last into her husband's face.
"Amos, if she _should_ ever come back!" He started, his eyes freezing.
"She won't! She--"
Would he have said "she _shall_ not?" God only knew.
"Martha, you talk nonsense! It's just like a woman. We've said enough
about this. I suppose He who's cursed us has got his own reasons for it.
We must bear it, and so must she."
He stood up, stroking his beard nervously, his eyes wandering about the
room; he did not, or he could not, look at his wife. Muff, rousing from
his slumbers, came up sleepily to be taken some notice of. She used to
love the dog,--the child; she gave him his name in a frolic one day; he
was always her playfellow; many a time they had come in and found her
asleep with Muff's black, shaggy sides for a pillow, and her little pink
arms around his neck, her face warm and bright with some happy dream.
Mr. Ryck had often thought he would sell the creature; but he never had.
If he had been a woman, he would have said he could not. Being a man, he
argued that Muff was a good watch-dog, and worth keeping.
"Always in the way, Muff!" he muttered, looking at the patient black
head rubbed against his knee. He was angry with the dog at that moment;
the next he had repented; the brute had done no wrong. He stooped and
patted him. Muff returned to his dreams content.
"Well, Martha," he said, coming up to her uneasily, "you look tired."
"Tired? No, I was only thinking, Amos."
The pallor of her face, its timid eyes and patient mouth, the whole
crushed look of the woman, struck him freshly. He stooped and kissed her
forehead, the sharp lines of his face relaxing a little.
"I didn't mean to be hard on you, Martha; we both have enough to bear
without that, but it's best not to talk of what can't be helped,--you
see."
"Yes."
"Don't think anything more about the day; it's not--it's not really good
for you; you must cheer up, little woman."
"Yes, Amos."
Perhaps his unusual tenderness gave her courage; she stood up, putting
both arms around his neck.
"If you'd only try to love her a little, after all, my husband! He would
know it; He might save her for it."
Amos Ryck choked, coughed, and said it was time for prayers. He took
down the old Bible in which his child's baby-fingers used to trace their
first lessons after his own, and read, not of her who loved much and was
forgiven, but one of the imprecatory Psalms.
When Mrs. Ryck was sure that her husband was asleep that night, she rose
softly from her bed, unlocked, with noiseless key, one of her bureau
drawers, took something from it, and then felt her way down the dark
stairs into the kitchen.
She drew a chair up to the fire, wrapped her shawl closely about her,
and untied, with trembling fingers, the knots of a soft silken
handkerchief in which her treasures were folded.
Some baby dresses of purest white; a child's little pink apron; a pair
of tiny shoes, worn through by pattering feet; and a toy or two all
broken, as some impatient little fingers had left them; she was such a
careless baby! Yet they never could scold her, she always affected such
pretty surprises, and wide blue-eyed penitence: a bit of a queen she was
at the farm.
Was it not most kindly ordered by the Infinite Tenderness which pitieth
its sorrowing ones, that into her still hours her child should come so
often only as a child, speaking pure things only, touching her mother so
like a restful hand, and stealing into a prayer?
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