It was over at last, the showers of rose leaves and rice, the white ribbons on the car, and the shouts and shrieks as the couple made their way to escape. The last guest was gone at last, the last hired servant paid, and the door locked. Euphemia turned to see her little frail mother sink suddenly down in her silken garments, a small, pathetic heap of orchid silk with a pale, white face above it.
She cried out as she sprang to kneel by her side, and her father rushed to them and knelt on the other side, his face ashen-gray in the garish light of the rooms still decorated for the wedding with flowers he could ill afford.
They got her to bed and telephoned for the doctor, but it was almost morning before they settled down to get any rest themselves. Even then they hardly dared to sleep, for their hearts were so anxious.
The next morning Mrs. Martin tried to get up, but found she could not. She said she was only tired and would get up in a little while, but when the doctor came in a little later, he wore an anxious look and asked a great many questions and commanded that she lie still for several days.
The several days stretched into a week, and then two, and three, and still she was unable to get up and go about.
At first the doctor talked cheerfully enough, saying she needed a good long rest, but as the weeks went by, it became evident that the trouble was more deep-seated than they expected. The poor nerves which had stretched and stretched until they almost snapped did not react, and Euphemia and her father gradually began to realize that the mother who had carried all their burdens and smoothed all their ways was down and out. And it was a serious question whether she would recover at all.
The knowledge of it came upon Euphemia like a crushing blow after the long hard going, for there was the house to be kept, and the poor servant utterly unable to cope with the situation, to say nothing of the mending and cleaning and baking, and the four-year-old baby to look after every hour in the day. There was her mother to be cared for like a baby herself; and there must be the most tender care, or she might slip away from them in a breath.
Mrs. Martin seemed satisfied only when Euphemia was with her. Of course a trained nurse might have relieved the situation greatly, but there was Mr. Martin harassed with a business crisis, submerged in debt, and struggling to pay some of the enormous bills that Eleanor had contracted for the wedding. The plain fact was they could not afford a nurse. And there was John, older, of course, a little, but still full of noise and mischief, and seemingly eager to coast down every wrong pathway of life that presented itself to his willing feet. More than half of their mother’s burden had been this same John, whose companions and habits had been for two years past wholly unsatisfactory and the last few months a plain daily anxiety. Something must be done for John. There was no end. And nobody but herself to fill the breach and bear all the burden. And there were her beloved books and her dreams of college by and by, and a wider sphere, although there was no need to complain of the narrowness of her sphere just now. It seemed to embrace almost every class and variety of work.
She sat in her room and thought about it awhile after the doctor had gone, when her mother and the restless four-year-old were asleep. “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are lovely, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,” kept going over and over in her mind. She was accustomed by this time to putting all her actions to that Philippian test. She knelt to pray and rose to shut her hopes and her books away in her closet and turn the key. Then she went down to her daily duties. This time she did not find the cat and the baby in the flypaper, but she found dismay and dreariness, for mother was upstairs sick, shut away from the household troubles. Mother could not bind up a cut finger, nor kiss a bumped head, nor get a boy bread and jelly when he was hungry, and the worst of it all was that there was uncertainty how long this terrible state of things might last. The young hearts whose heaven was Mother’s face could not see any light.
Then Euphemia found that she could comfort; she could think to do this thing and plan for that thing and give up her own ways and plans; teach a spelling lesson to one, tell a story to another, and yet with the help of God keep patient and sweet through it all.
She still kept her little time by herself alone to commune with Jesus, or she could not have done it. Here she brought all her troubles and worries to think about. Sometimes it seemed so strange to her to think her life, that had always somehow been under a sort of cloud, was cut off from things that other girls had. She would go back in her memory often to that lovely day and that ride when she met Lawrence Earle and recall the only really grown-up pleasure she had ever had in all her young womanhood, and wonder if it would always be the only one. Very likely it would, because she was growing old so fast. Poor child! She felt almost gray-haired.
But she did not sigh after those things long. Perhaps it would have been harder for her if she had been accustomed to going out a great deal. She was so continually busy and so really interested in her daily round that she had not time to be sad-hearted now. She sometimes got out her books, too, for after the first few months of self-abnegation, she saw that it was not necessary for her to sacrifice all her reading and study, and so she was not growing stupid. Sometimes when all was quiet and dark, she would wonder to herself if the only person besides her mother who had ever promised to pray for her had forgotten. Probably he had long ago forgotten her existence. It was a year since she had received even a postcard from him. She was not even sure in what land he was at present exiled. If he thought of her at all, he probably remembered her only as a disagreeable little girl whom he had tried to help to peace and happiness. And how wonderfully he had done it! If his witnessing in foreign lands for the rest of his life brought no results, he yet might count a humble star in his crown for the light he had brought into her discontented young heart. She would bless him always for it.
And what would she have done under this crisis if she had not found a refuge and stronghold in Christ? Surely the prayers of Lawrence Earle had been what had kept her from slipping away from God during those first months when she had been so discouraged, and perhaps they were helping even now. It gave her comfort to think that this was so and to feel that somewhere, somehow, she had an earthly friend, as well as a heavenly, who would at least care and pray for her, if he knew her need. Then she would drop softly asleep and waken to another day full of labor and sunshine, for she was the sunshine of her mother’s room.
Chapter 14
Mrs. Martin went down to the verge of the grave and lingered for weeks, merging into months, but at last, slowly, gradually, so gradually that they could hardly be sure from day to day whether it was true or not, she began to creep back to them again. To take a little interest in their coming back and forth to her room, tiptoeing in with bated breath to watch her quiet face upon the pillow; to open her eyes and smile; to lift her head one morning for a flower that Euphemia brought in, and then to ask after the baby and want to see him.
Eleanor had not come home. They had not told her how ill her mother was. The doctor said it would not do for her to have the excitement of Eleanor’s coming.
Eleanor was “doing” the West in a wildly exciting wedding trip with all the accessories that money could provide. She wrote brief, breezy occasional postals home, saying very little and conveying less. Euphemia seemed to feel an undertone of discontent even yet, and wondered, but there was little time to think of Eleanor.
Her mother was coming back to them, from the grave, and Euphemia’s heart was full of deep, sweet joy. God had heard her prayer. Almost with awe she gave thanks. It seemed that she had come very close to Christ during her time of trial and was coming to trust Him more and more restfully.
The day that her mother was first able to sit up for a little while was like a grand holiday. Father came home and sat with her and brought roses! The kind he used to bring Mother when he was courting her. And Euphemia noticed with another thrill of joy that the worn look was passing from his face, and his tired eyes were lit with ne
w hope.
“Well,” he said, after he had sat for a while holding his wife’s hand and looking at her hungrily. “Mother, I guess it won’t do you any harm to know we’re going to pull through in the business now.”
“Really?” said Euphemia, springing softly up and coming to lay her hand on her father’s shoulder.
“Yes, we signed the big contract today. We get it all, and it means that by this time next year, we’ll be entirely out of the hole. We are practically now, only the money won’t all come in at once. But we’re standing on firm ground at last, thank God. And Euphemia, little daughter,” he added, turning to the girl, “it’s partly due to you. There was a time just after Mother took sick when I thought I couldn’t weather it. And then you took hold and lifted burden after burden from my shoulders. And you stayed at home from college, and saved all that expense, and cut down the expenses here at home, and saved Mother for me. Little girl, I never can tell you what you have been to me, to your mother, to John, and to the baby and all of us! You are a daughter such as no father and mother ever had before. Isn’t she, Mother?”
And the mother’s eyes lighted with the old sweet light as she said tenderly, “She’s all of that and more.”
Euphemia thought that her cup of joy was filled, but her father went on.
“There’s another thing, Daughter, too, that I must mention while I’m singing your praises. I want Mother to know what you have done for John. Mother knows how anxious we were about him. He had got going with a bad crowd and it seemed as if nothing could stop him, but somehow you have woven an influence about him that has pulled him away from it all. He came down to the office today and told me he wanted me to take him in and train him for a partnership. He wanted to begin at the bottom and go up as fast as he was able. And I told him I’d be glad to. It will be better for him than fooling his time away at college the way he did last year. And I think he really means business. I’d have been glad to have him have the rest of his college course, but he says, and I agree with him, that he can go and take the rest of his course later if he finds he needs it. It’s never too late to study. And he knows I cannot afford to send him just now. He says when he goes he’s going on his own money. And I feel that is the right spirit. But I think his change of attitude is all due to his sister!”
It was sweet living those days, with Mother coming back fast to daily life now, and the spring coming on, and all the good things her father had said to think about. And Euphemia went about with a continual smile upon her lips.
And then, one day when Euphemia was walking home from an errand with her hands full of lilacs that a neighbor had sent to her mother, she noticed that the windows of the Earle house were open at last, and a few minutes later met another neighbor who told her that Mrs. Earle was returning that afternoon.
Euphemia came home with her eyes bright with the news. She wondered to herself many things. Would Lawrence Earle come, too? Probably not. She knew that his mother had been during the past year in California again with her invalid sister, and that the sister was not expected to live long. That was the news that had drifted back to the hometown. In a general way, Lawrence Earle was supposed still to be in foreign lands pursuing an occupation which the town was beginning to call by the name of “missionary.” Some new kind of missionary, they said he was, doing something about Bible teaching.
Mrs. Earle had indeed returned and began at once to set her house in order, and it began to be rumored that her son was coming later and would perhaps spend the whole summer with her. The story drifted out and around, without Mrs. Earle’s having even dropped a hint of any such thing. But some of her neighbors gathered, perhaps from things she had not said, that her son was going to bring someone home with him, presumably his bride. The suppositions grew to the proportions of confident statement and were spread abroad as such. They came to Euphemia Martin’s ears. Now Euphemia Martin was too happy over her mother’s recovery to be other than glad over anything, and when she thought about this report at all, she wondered if Lawrence Earle’s wife would be one in whom she could confide. Of course she would, she told herself, for he would choose no other than a good and true and lovely woman. And so in her heart she liked to think the coming Mrs. Earle would be a friend of hers. She held Lawrence Earle in a kind of awe, as someone higher than the ordinary mortal, who had condescended for a little time to help her. He had forgotten her long ago, but she would always revere him. Euphemia would always be of humble mind after that severe experience she had had of seeing herself as others saw her.
One bright spring morning, when Mrs. Martin was feeling quite well and was able to be about the house once more, doing what little her efficient daughter had left for her to do of household tasks, Euphemia picked a great bunch of fragrant violets from the bank in their backyard, and with heart throbbing over her temerity and cheeks flushed slightly from the excitement of what she was about to do, went timidly to call on Mrs. Earle and leave her gift of violets.
She had a pleasant call. It seemed delightful to her. Mrs. Earle put her arms about her, drew her gently in, and called her “my dear.” It all seemed very, very charming. Euphemia wished she had ventured before, and was even moved to ask some questions that in times past had troubled her so much, and which on account of her mother’s illness she had been obliged to solve without a counselor. Before she went home, Mrs. Earle showed her some photographs of her son and several pictures taken during their trips abroad. In two or three of them there were other friends, whom Mrs. Earle said had been traveling with them. One sweet-faced girl was among those. Euphemia wondered if that was the coming Mrs. Earle, Jr., but lacked the courage to ask. She carried the vision of that face home with her and began to make a friend of it at once. Mrs. Earle asked her to come again, and there was begun a friendship, which to both became very pleasant. Thus the springtime passed and summer was already at hand, and scarcely a day went by but Mrs. Earle ran over to bring some delicacy to her old friend, Mrs. Martin, or Euphemia ran in to take some message from her mother. The old friendship was renewed and knit the closer between the two older women because the young girl was so dear to them both.
And nearer and nearer drew the day for the homecoming of the son, but Euphemia somehow was strangely silent when the mother spoke of him. It seemed a subject in which she now had no part, save as an onlooker. A glad one, of course, but still a mere outsider.
Chapter 15
Lawrence Earle boarded the New York Express, and after settling himself comfortably, took an unopened letter from his pocket. It was from his mother and had arrived just as he was leaving for the station. Being attended by a friend with whom he had spent the night in New York, he had put the letter by until he was at leisure on the train. He leaned back to enjoy it. His mother’s letters were always a luxury. He read on through page after page of the closely written letter, smiling here and there at some sentence or expression that sounded so like his mother. He was greatly amused at the story she had to tell him of his supposed marriage, and stopped in his reading several times to look out of the window and laugh heartily. His mother had much talent in describing the words and tones of some of her many curious neighbors, and her son enjoyed her bits of quaint humor.
“They’ve settled it all, my son, even down to the bride, and whether she is to have charge of the house or not. I don’t know what they will say when you come home without her. And I must say, my boy, though I know I should lose much of your precious society and be no longer first in your thoughts as I have been, that I could wish it were true. For you know, I cannot always stay with you, and you are getting to be ‘quite a man.’ ”
At that sentence the young man smiled, while yet the moisture gathered in his eyes, and a tender expression about his mouth.
The quotation was from the oft-spoken comment of an old neighbor who used to annoy him when he was a child by always telling him that he was getting to be “quite a man.” When his mother wanted to be playful she often used the phrase. There followe
d some words about a certain young woman they had met abroad, and he stopped his reading once more to look thoughtfully out of the window. But at last he seemed to shake his head slightly and went back seriously to his letter. There was a description of the changes she had made in certain rooms and of repairs and additions she thought it would be pleasant to make. There were little items of pleasantry about the town and the people. She told of the changes in certain families during their absence. “But there is no one who has changed more and for the better than your little friend. You will remember her, Euphemia Martin. She called to see me soon after my return in the spring. She seems to be a very lovable girl. I hear good things of her on every side. She has not only beauty, but character in her face, and not only that, but chastened, sweetened character. She is one of Christ’s own children. I liked her sweet and gentle manners and her neat and graceful dress. She certainly has grown into a lovely girl and is going to be another such as her mother was before her. Her mother was a beautiful woman before she took upon her heavier cares than she was able to bear. She, by the way, has been very ill for the past two years, and Euphemia has become the mainstay of the home and the very life of her mother. I am really growing extravagantly fond of her. I had no idea she would ever develop into such a lovely character. Some people used not to like her, and now everyone in town has a good word for her. The pretty sister, Eleanor, whom I always thought looked selfish, you remember, has married and gone to California to live. And to tell you the truth, I am thankful for I was always afraid you would become fond of her. You thought so much of the older sister Margaret when you were a mere boy. But Eleanor was no more like Margaret than night is like day. Euphemia seems to be more like Margaret, yet with an added charm which I cannot quite describe. You will have to see her to understand.”