By the Light of the Soul Part 57

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 embarra.s.sing 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 pa.s.sion. "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.