February 16. Father used to say that Peggy Cole was the proudest thing on the face of the earth, and he would certainly be amused if he could know how her pride has increased. I could not leave Mother this afternoon, and so I sent Rosa down with a pail of soup to the poor old goody. Peggy refused to have it because I did not bring it myself. She wasn't a pauper to have me send her soup, she informed Rosa. I am afraid that Rosa was indiscreet enough to make some remark upon the fact that I carry her food pretty often, for old Peggy said,--I can see her wrinkled old nose turned up in supreme scorn as she brought it out,--"That's different. When Miss Ruth brings me a little thing now and then,--and it ain't often she'll take that trouble, either!--that's just a friend dropping in with something to make her sure of her welcome!" I shall have to leave everything to-morrow to go and make my peace with Peggy, for the old goose would starve to death before she would take anything from the Overseers of the Poor, and I do not see how she keeps alive, anyway.

February 17. I had a note from George this morning about the Burgess mortgage, and in it he said that he is to be away for a week or two.

That means--

But I have no longer any right to speculate about him. It is not my business what it means. Henceforth he must come and go, and I must not even wonder about it.

February 19. I must face the fact that Mother will not be with me much longer. I can see how she grows weaker, and I can only be thankful that she does not suffer. She speaks of death now and then as calmly as if it were a matter of every-day routine.

"Mrs. Privet," Dr. Wentworth said this morning, "you seem to be no more afraid of death than you are of a sunrise."

"I'm not orthodox enough to be afraid," she answered, with her little quizzical smile.

Dear little Mother, she is so serene, so sweet, so quiet; nothing could be more dignified, and yet nothing more entirely simple. She is dying like a gentlewoman. She lies there as gracious as if she had invited death as a dear friend, and awaited him with the kindliest welcome. The naturalness of it all is what impresses me most. When I am with her it is impossible for me to feel that anything terrible is at hand. She might be going away to pa.s.s a pleasant summer visit somewhere; but there is no suspicion of anything dreadful or painful.

It is not that she is indifferent, either,--she has always found life a thing to be glad of.

"I should have liked well enough to stay a while longer to bother you, Ruth," she said, after Dr. Wentworth had gone, "but we must take things as they come. It's better, perhaps; you need a rest."

Dear Mother! She is always so lovely and so wonderful!

February 21. Mother has been brighter to-day, and really seems better.

If it will only last! I asked her last night if she expected to see Father. She lay quiet a moment, and then she turned her face to smile on me before she answered.

"I don't know, Ruth," she said. "I have wondered about that a good deal, and I cannot be sure. If he is alive and knows, then I shall see him. I am sure of that. It is only life that has been keeping us apart. If he is not any more, why, then I shall not be either, and so of course I can't be unhappy. I feel just as he used to when he had you read that translation from something to him the week before he died; the thing that said death could not be an evil, for if we kept on existing we would be no longer bothered by the body, and that if we didn't, it was no matter, for we shouldn't know."

She was still a moment, looking into some great distance with her patient, sunken eyes. Then she smiled again, and said as if to herself, "But I think I shall see him."

February 25. George is married. Aunt Naomi has been in to tell me. She mentioned it as if it were a thing in which I should have no more interest than in any bit of village news. She did not watch me, I remember now, or ask my opinion as she generally does. She was wonderfully tactful and kind; only I can see she thought I ought to know about it, and that the best way was to put the matter bluntly and simply, as if it had no possible sentiment connected with it. When she had done her errand, she went on to make remarks about Deacon Richards and the vestry fires; just what, I do not know, for I could not listen.

Then she mercifully went away.

I did not expect it so soon! I knew that it must come, but I was not prepared for this suddenness. I supposed that I should hear of the engagement, and get used to it; and then come to know the wedding was to be, and so come gradually to the thing itself that shuts George forever out of my life. It is better, it is a thousand times better to have it all over at once. I might have brooded morbidly through the days as they brought nearer and nearer the time when George was to be her husband instead of mine. Now it is done without my knowing. For three days he has been married; and I have only to think of him as the husband of another woman, and try to take it as a matter of course. Whether George has done this because he cares so much for her or not, he has done what is kindest for me. It is like waking from the ether to find that the tooth is out. We may be sick and sore, but the worst is past, and we may begin, slowly perhaps, but really, to recover.

Yet it is so soon! How completely he must be carried away to be so forgetful of all that is past! We were engaged six years; and he marries Miss West after an acquaintance of hardly as many weeks. I wonder if all men are like this. It seems sometimes as if they were not capable of the long, brooding devotion of women. But it is better so, and I would not have him thinking about me. He must be wrapped up in her. I do care most for his happiness, and his happiness now lies in his thinking of her and forgetting all the six years when he was--when I thought he was mine.

I will not moon, and I will not fret. That George has changed does not, of course, alter my feeling. I am sore and hurt; I see life now restricted in its uses. He has cut me off from the happiness of serving him and helping him as a wife; but as a friend there is still much that I may do. Very likely I can help his wife,--she seems so far short of what his wife should be. For service in all loyalty I belong to him still; and that is the thought which must help me.

February 28. I have already had a chance to do something for George. I hope that I have not been unfair to my friends; but I do not see how I could decide any other way.

Old lady Andrews came in this afternoon, with her snowy curls and cheeks pink from the wind. Almost as soon as she was seated she began with characteristic directness.

"I know you won't mind my coming straight to the point, my dear," she said. "I came to ask you about George Weston's new wife. Do you think we had better call on her?"

The question had come to me before, but I confess I had selfishly thought of it only as a personal matter.

"Mr. Weston's people were hardly of our sort, you know," she continued in her gentle voice, "though of course after your father took him into his office as a student we all felt like receiving him. I never knew him until after that."

"I have seen a good deal of him," I said, wondering if my voice sounded queer; "you know he helped settle the estate."

"It did seem providential," Mrs. Andrews went on, "that his mother did not live, for of course we could hardly have known her. She was a Hardy, you know, from Canton. But I have always found Mr. Weston a very presentable young man, especially for one of his cla.s.s. He is really very intelligent."

"As we have received him," I said, "I don't see how we can refuse to receive his wife."

"That's the way I thought you would feel about it," old lady Andrews answered; "but I wished to be sure. As he has been received entirely on account of his connection with your family, I told Aunt Naomi that it ought to be for you to say whether the favor should be extended to his wife. I am informed that she is very pretty, but she is not, I believe, exactly one of our sort."

"She is exceedingly pretty," I a.s.sured her. "I have seen her. She is not--Well, I am afraid that she is rather Western, but I shall call."

"Then that settles it. Of course we shall do whatever you decide. I suppose he will bring her to our church. I say 'our,' Ruth, because you really belong to it. You are just a lamb that has found a place with a picket off, and got outside the fold. We shall have you back some time."

"I am afraid," I said laughing, "that I should only disgrace you and injure the fold by pulling a fresh picket off somewhere to get out again."

She laughed in turn, and fluttered her small hands in her delightful, birdlike way.

"I am not afraid of that," she responded. "When the Lord leads you in, He is able to make you want to stay. I hope your mother is comfortable."

So that is settled, and Miss West--Why am I such a coward about writing it?--Mrs. Weston is to be one of us. George will be glad that she is not left out of society.

III

MARCH

March 2. Mother's calmness keeps me ashamed of the hot ache in my heart and the restlessness which makes it so hard for me to keep an outward composure. Hannah is rather shocked that she should be so entirely unmoved in the face of death, and the dear, foolish old soul, steeped in theological asperities from her cradle, must needs believe that Mother is somehow endangering her future welfare by this very serenity.

"Don't you think, Miss Ruth," she said to me yesterday, "that you could persuade your mother to see Mr. Saychase? She'd do it to oblige you."

"But it wouldn't oblige me, Hannah."

"Oh, Miss Ruth, think of her immortal soul!"

"Hannah," I said as gently as I could, she was so distressed, "you know how Mother always felt about those things. It certainly couldn't do any good now to try to alter her opinions, and it would only tire her."

I left Hannah as quickly as I could without hurting her feelings, but I might have known that her conscience would force her to speak to Mother.

"Bless me, Hannah," Mother said to her, "I'm no more wicked because I'm going to die than if I were going to live. I can't help dying, you know, so I don't feel responsible."

When Hannah tried to go on, and broke down with tears, Mother put out her thin hand, like a sweet shadow.

"Hannah," she said, "I know how you feel, and I thank you for speaking; but don't be troubled. Where there are 'many mansions,' don't you think there may be one even for those who did not see the truth, if they were honest in their blindness?"

March 4. How far away everything else seems when the foot of death is almost at the door! As I sit by the bedside in the long nights, wondering whether he will come before morning, I think of the nights in which I may sometime be waiting for death myself. I wonder whether I shall be as serene and absolutely unterrified as Mother is. It is after all only the terror of the unknown. Why should we be more ready to think of the unknown as dreadful than as delightful? We certainly hail the thought of new experiences in the body; why not out of it? Novelty in itself must give a wonderful charm to that new life, at least for a long time. Think of the pleasure of having youth all over again, for we shall at least be young to any new existence into which we go, just as babies are young to this.