After a Shadow and Other Stories Part 12

"Don't talk to me in that way, Phoebe! I'll not suffer it. You are forgetting yourself." The mother spoke with a sternness of manner that caused her daughter to remain silent. As they stood looking at each other, Mrs. Caldwell said, in a changed voice,--

"What is that on your front tooth?"

"A speck of something, I don't know what; I noticed it only yesterday."

Mrs. Caldwell crossed the room hastily, with a disturbed manner, and catching hold of Phoebe's arm, drew her to a window.

"Let me see!" and she looked narrowly at the tooth, "Decay, as I live!" The last sentence was uttered in a tone of alarm. "You must go to the dentist immediately. This is dreadful! If your teeth are beginning to fail now, you'll not have one left in your head by the time you're twenty-five."

"It's only a speck," said Phoebe, evincing little concern.

"A speck! I And do you know what a speck means?" demanded Mrs.

Caldwell, with no chance in the troubled expression of her face.

"What does it mean?" asked Phoebe.

"Why, it means that the quality of your teeth is not good. One speck is only the herald of another. Next week a second tooth may show signs of decay, and a third in the week afterwards. Dear--dear! This is too bad! The fact is, you are destroying your health. I've talked and talked about the way you devour candies and sweetmeats; about the way you sit up at night, and about a hundred other irregularities.

There must be a change in all. This, Phoebe, as I've told you dozens and dozens of times."

Mrs. Caldwell was growing more and more excited.

"Mother! mother!" replied Phoebe, "don't fret yourself for nothing.

The speck can be removed in an instant."

"But the enamel is destroyed! Don't you see that? Decay will go on."

"I don't believe that follows at all," answered Phoebe, tossing her head, indifferently, "And even if I believed in the worst, I'd find more comfort in laughing than crying." And she ran off to her own room.

Poor Mrs. Caldwell sat down to brood over this new trouble; and as she brooded, fancy wrought for her the most unpleasing images.

She saw the beauty of Phoebe, a few years later in life, most sadly marred by broken or discolored teeth. Looking at that, and that alone, it magnified itself into a calamity, grew to an evil which overshadowed everything.

She was still tormenting herself about the prospect of Phoebe's loss of teeth, when, in pa.s.sing through her elegantly-furnished parlors, her eyes fell on a pale acid stain, about the size of a s.h.i.+lling piece, one of the rich figures in the carpet. The color of this figure was maroon, and the stain, in consequence, distinct; at least, it became very distinct to her eye as they dwelt upon it as if held there by a kind of fascination.

Indeed, for a while, Mrs. Caldwell could see nothing else but this spot on the carpet; no, not even though she turned her eyes in various directions, the retina keeping that image to the exclusion of all others.

While yet in the gall of this new bitterness, Mrs. Caldwell heard a carriage stop in front of the house, and, glancing through the window, saw that it was on the opposite side of the street. She knew it to be the carriage of a lady whose rank made her favor a desirable thing to all who were emulous of social distinction. To be of her set was a coveted honor. For her friend and neighbor opposite, Mrs. Caldwell did not feel the highest regard; and it rather hurt her to see the first call made in that quarter, instead of upon herself. It was no very agreeable thought, that this lady-queen of fas.h.i.+on, so much courted and regarded, might really think most highly of her neighbor opposite. To be second to her, touched the quick of pride, and hurt.

Only a card was left. Then the lady reentered her carriage. What?

Driving away? Even so. Mrs. Caldwell was not even honored by a call!

This was penetrating the quick. What could it mean? Was she to be ruled out of this lady's set? The thought was like a wounding arrow to her soul.

Unhappy Mrs. Caldwell! Her daughter's careless habits; the warning sign of decay among her pearly teeth; the stain on a beautiful carpet, and, worse than all as a pain-giver, this slight from a magnate of fas.h.i.+on;--were not these enough to cast a gloom over the state of a woman who had everything towards happiness that wealth and social station could give, but did not know how to extract from them the blessing they had power to bestow? Slowly, and with oppressed feelings, she left the parlors, and went up stairs. Half an hour later, as she sat alone, engaged in the miserable work of weaving out of the lightest material a very pall of shadows for her soul, a servant came to the door, and announced a visitor. It was an intimate friend, whom she could not refuse to see--a lady named Mrs.

Bland.

"How are you, Mrs. Caldwell?" said the visitor, as the two ladies met.

"Miserable," was answered. And not even the ghost of a smile played over the unhappy face.

"Are you sick?" asked Mrs. Bland, showing some concern.

"No, not exactly sick. But, somehow or other, I'm in a worry about things all the while. I can't move a step in any direction without coming against the p.r.i.c.ks. It seems as though all things were conspiring against me."

And then Mrs. Caldwell went, with her friend, through the whole series of her morning troubles, ending with the sentence,--

"Now, don't you think I am beset? Why, Mrs. Bland, I'm in a purgatory."

"A purgatory of your own creating, my friend," answered Mrs. Bland with the plainness of speech warranted by the intimacy of their friends.h.i.+p; "and my advice is to come out of it as quickly as possible."

"Come out of it! That is easily said. Will you show me the way?"

"At some other time perhaps. But this morning I have something else on hand. I've called for you to go with me on an errand of mercy."

There was no Christian response in the face of Mrs. Caldwell. She was too deep amid the gloom of her own, wretched state to have sympathy for others.

"Mary Brady is in trouble," said Mrs. Bland.

"What has happened?" Mrs. Caldwell was alive with interest in a moment.

"Her husband fell through a hatchway yesterday, and came near being killed."

"Mrs. Bland!"

"The escape was miraculous."

"Is he badly injured?"

"A leg and two ribs broken. Nothing more, I believe. But that is a very serious thing, especially where the man's labor is his family's sole dependence."

"Poor Mary!" said Mrs. Caldwell, in real sympathy. "In what a dreadful state she must be! I pity her from the bottom of my heart."

"Put on your things, and let us go and see her at once."

Now, it is never a pleasant thing for persons like Mrs. Caldwell to look other people's troubles directly in the face. It is bad enough to dwell among their own pains and annoyances, and they shrink from meddling with another's griefs. But, in the present case, Mrs.

Caldwell, moved by a sense of duty and a feeling of interest in Mrs.

Brady, who had, years before, been a faithful domestic in her mother's house, was, constrained to overcome all reluctance, and join her friend in the proposed visit of mercy.

"Poor Mary! What a state she must be in!"

Three or four times did Mrs. Caldwell repeat this sentence, as they walked towards that part of the town in which Mrs. Brady resided.

"It makes me sick, at heart to think of it," she added.

At last they stood at the door of a small brick house, in a narrow street, and knocked. Mrs. Caldwell dreaded to enter, and even shrank a little behind her friend when she heard a hand on the lock. It was Mary who opened the door--Mary Brady, with scarcely a sign of change in her countenance, except that it was a trifle paler.

"O! Come in!" she said, a smile of pleasure brightening over her face. But Mrs. Caldwell could not smile in return. It seemed to her as if it would be a mockery of the trouble which had come down upon that humble dwelling.

"How is your husband, Mary?" she asked with a solemn face, as soon as they had entered. "I only heard a little while ago of this dreadful occurrence."