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Page 68
She was teaching school out West when mother sent for her. I saw the
letter. It was just like my mother: "Alice, I need you. You and I ought
to have but one home now. Will you come?"
I saw, too, a bit of postscript to the answer: "I'm not fit that you
should love me so, Marie."
And how mother laughed at it!
When it was all settled, and the waiting weeks became at last a single
day, I hardly knew my mother. She was so full of fitful moods, and
little fantastic jokes! such a flush on her cheeks too, as she ran to
the window every five minutes, like a child! I remember how we went all
over the house together, she and I, to see that everything looked neat,
and bright, and welcome. And how we lingered in the guest-room, to put
the little finishing touches to its stillness, and coolness, and
coseyness. The best spread was on the bed, and the white folds smoothed
as only mother's fingers could smooth them; the curtain freshly washed,
and looped with its crimson cord; the blinds drawn, cool and green; the
late afternoon sunlight slanting through, in flecks upon the floor.
There were flowers, too, upon the table. I remember they were all
white,--lilies of the valley, I think; and the vase of Parian marble,
itself a solitary lily, unfolding stainless leaves. Over the mantle she
had hung the finest picture in the house,--an "Ecce Homo," and an
exquisite engraving. It used to hang in grandmother's room in the old
house. We children wondered a little that she took it upstairs.
"I want your aunt to feel at home, and see some things," she said. "I
wish I could think of something more to make it pleasant in here."
Just as we left the room she turned and looked into it. "Pleasant, isn't
it? I am so glad, Sarah," her eyes dimming a little. "She's a very dear
sister to me."
She stepped in again to raise a stem of the lilies that had fallen from
the vase and lay like wax upon the table, then she shut the door and
came away.
That door was shut just so for years; the lonely bars of sunlight
flecked the solitude of the room, and the lilies faded on the table. We
children passed it with hushed footfall, and shrank from it at twilight,
as from a room that held the dead. But into it we never went.
Mother was tired out that afternoon; for she had been on her feet all
day, busied in her loving cares to make our simple home as pleasant and
as welcome as home could be. But yet she stopped to dress us in our
Sunday clothes,--and it was no sinecure to dress three persistently
undressable children; Winthrop was a host in himself. "Auntie must see
us look our prettiest," she said.
She was a sight for an artist when she came down. She had taken off her
widow's cap and coiled her heavy hair low in her neck, and she always
looked like a queen in that lustreless black silk. I do not know why
these little things should have made such an impression on me then.
They are priceless to me now. I remember how she looked, framed there in
the doorway, while we were watching for the coach,--the late light
ebbing in golden tides over the grass at her feet, and touching her face
now and then through the branches of trees, her head bent a little, with
eager, parted lips, and the girlish color on her cheeks, her hand
shading her eyes as they strained for a sight of the lumbering coach.
She must have been a magnificent woman when she was young,--not unlike,
I have heard it said, to that far-off ancestress whose name she bore,
and whose sorrowful story has made her sorrowful beauty immortal.
Somewhere abroad there is a reclining statue of Queen Mary, to which,
when my mother stood beside it, her resemblance was so strong that the
by-standers clustered about her, whispering curiously. "Ah, mon Dieu!"
said a little Frenchman aloud, "c'est une r�surrection."
We must have tried her that afternoon, Clara and Winthrop and I; for the
spirit of her own excitement had made us completely wild. Winthrop's
scream of delight, when, stationed on the gate-post, he caught the first
sight of the old yellow coach, might have been heard a quarter of a
mile.
"Coming?" said mother, nervously, and stepped out to the gate, full in
the sunlight that crowned her like royal gold.
The coach lumbered on, and rattled up, and passed.
"Why, she hasn't come!" All the eager color died out of her face. "I am
so disappointed!"--speaking like a troubled child, and turning slowly
into the house.
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