they had buried agatha's mother,—put her away under a sheltering tree, beloved of bird and breeze, which waved its boughs between her and the bending, changeful summer sky. agatha thought no other spot in the world could be so pleasant or so dear; and she longed, from the depths of her little, ten-years-old heart, to stay there with bird, and breeze, and tree, and the buried mother, who must hear her voice, she thought, even though she could never reply to it again in all the years.
her father, pale with sorrow himself, had never come near enough to his child to be her comforter now. he talked little to any one of either his joys or his sorrows. agatha loved him, partly because she had always been taught to love and have faith in him; and, partly, too, because she knew well,[pg 83] with that childish and intuitive perception which discovers every thing, how dear he was to her mother; but she did not feel near to him, and she could not possibly have told him how she longed to stay there beside that grave. she made no protest when he took her hand to lead her away, though it seemed to her that she left her heart behind her, and that the lump in her breast was a cold stone to which warmth would never come back any more.
she went home, and some one took off her little black hat, and put on an apron over her mourning gown, and then she was left in peace to sit at the window, and look out toward the spot where they had laid her mother, and wonder what was to become of her. they called her to supper, but she was not hungry,—she thought she never should be again,—and there was no mother to beguile her with dainty morsels. when they found she did not want to come they let her alone, and still she sat there and wondered.
at last the twilight fell, and in the dusk her father came to her. he loved her very dearly;[pg 84] and especially now, that her mother was gone, and only she was left to him, he felt for her an unspeakable tenderness; literally unspeakable, for he did not know how to utter one word of it to his child. he longed to comfort her,—to tell her how dear she was to him,—but he could not. he sat down beside her, and looked at her little pale face, outlined against the western window, with such a depth of pity that it seemed to make his voice quieter and colder than ever when he spoke, because it required such an effort to speak at all.
"to-morrow, agatha, i shall take you to your aunt irene. every girl needs a woman's care, and she will watch over you as faithfully as if you were her own."
agatha never dreamed of objecting. she tried to think that she might as well be in one place as another, for she shouldn't live long anywhere without her mother. but she dreaded aunt irene's watching, as she dreaded few things in the world. she had made visits now and then at the quiet old homestead of which this aunt was mistress, and it seemed to her, on such occasions, that[pg 85] aunt irene did nothing but watch her from the time she entered the house; and in those days it had taken all the sunshine of her mother's joyous nature to gild the visits into some substitute for the pleasures other children took in their vacations. now, to go without her mother—all alone—and be "watched over" by her aunt! she began to know that she had a heart, after all, by its frightened fluttering.
aunt irene was her father's sister, with all the raymond peculiarities of pride, and reserve, and silence, which made him half a stranger to his own child, intensified in her by her life of seclusion and of absolute authority over herself and her possessions. her experiences had been narrow, and her aims had been narrow also. mr. raymond saw this, his one sister, always at her best; and, through long knowledge of her, he understood her really trustworthy and excellent qualities. he felt that he was doing for agatha the best which fate now permitted him to do, in confiding her to this guidance, so sure to be wise, as he believed, even if not loving.
[pg 86]
the long car-ride next day was almost a silent one. agatha would have rejected with hot juvenile scorn, the idea that the presence or absence of any material comforts could affect her grief; and yet she would have felt a little less desolate, i think, if the heat had not been so intense, the dust so choking, and the seat so hard and straight.
when she had made the journey in other years with her mother, how much shorter the way had seemed. the fresh linen frocks she used to wear were so much easier and cooler than the stifling black gown she had on to-day; and somehow her mother knew just when to open the windows and when to shut them, and if the seat was straight and hard, there was always mamma's lap or shoulder to lean against; and she forgot to be weary when mamma beguiled the time by poem or story. but her father rode silently, looking into vacancy for a face he would never see again; and after he had once bought agatha's ticket, and seated her beside him, it did not occur to him to do any thing to relieve the monotony of the long, dusty ride.
[pg 87]
it was dusk when the stage from the railway station set them down at aunt irene's door. agatha walked up the path timidly. it was a long, straight path, and either side of it grew thoroughly well-disciplined flowers; a rosebush on one side, just opposite to a rosebush on the other,—agatha wondered if either of them would have dared to bear one rose more than the other did,—a peony on one side and its mate opposite; so of a syringa bush, a flowering almond, and a root of lilies. between the well-marshalled ranks of flowers, which somehow made the child think of soldiers on guard, she followed her father up to the door, where aunt irene waited, grim chatelaine.
mr. raymond shook hands with his sister, and then said gravely,—
"irene, i have brought you my poor, motherless little girl," and aunt irene put out her firm, strong, unyielding hand and took the child's into it, then bent and—not kissed her, kisses belonged to the dead days—but laid her lips on her cheek, and so agatha went in.
every thing was good and substantial in aunt[pg 88] irene's house. you found there no frail stands which a careless touch might throw over, no brittle ornaments, no egg-shell china. the carpets were dark and rich and sombre. the tables and chairs were all of solid wood, and stood high and square. the sofas were heavy and firm, and the whole air of the place was grave and respectable, as aunt irene's surroundings should have been. i am not sure that any light, modern, fancy articles, suggestive of elegant idleness, had they been placed in her rooms, would not themselves have perceived their unsuitableness, and trundled off on their own castors.
the supper which awaited the travellers followed the prevailing fashion of the house. the biscuits were three times as large as the biscuits on other tea-tables. there were no frisky rolls, no light-minded whips or wafers. but there were good old-fashioned preserve, serious-looking cake, and substantial slices of cold meat.
aunt irene herself, sitting behind the tea-urn—solid silver, of course—comported with all the rest. she was a solid woman, with no superfluous[pg 89] flesh, and yet with a well-fed, well-to-do aspect, which was unmistakable. her head was high and narrow, her features good, her strong hair had disdained to turn gray, and her eyes were keen if cold. her lips, which had never cooed over babies, or soothed the sorrows of little children, or talked nonsense to any listener, were thin, as to such seldom-used lips seemed natural. they shut tightly over all her secrets.
agatha's head began to ache furiously, and she could not eat. the room swam round and round till she felt as if she were the centre of a rolling ball, and her chair rocked, she thought, and she was slipping off it, when her father saw her white, strange face and wavering figure, and sprang up just in time to catch her in his arms.
"she is sick, irene," he said. "where is her room? let me carry her there."
while he went upstairs with her she revived, and lifted her tired head from his shoulder to look into his eyes.
"i wish you were not going away, papa," she ventured to say.
[pg 90]
"i can't stay on in the old places, where i have lived with your mother, without her," was the answer which came, and which was like giving her a key wherewith to unlock her father's heart, and so made the two nearer to each other than they had ever been before.
"some time will you come back, and let me live with you?" she whispered, wondering at her own rashness.
"if you are good, dear, and learn to be womanly and helpful, and to take care of yourself, i will come back for you, or you shall come to me, and we will be together always."
no one knew with what passionate yet timid hope agatha's little heart beat as she lay there alone on her strange, high bed. womanly and helpful,—that was what he had said, and she would be just that. she would do all aunt irene said, and never mind how much she was watched, since watching might help to make her nearer right, and get her ready all the sooner to go to her father and be his comfort.
the very next day he left her. the death of[pg 91] his wife had seemed to sweep away all his old landmarks. he had been, hitherto, a quiet unadventurous man contented with his narrow routine of daily duty, which always brought him back to the tenderness of her welcoming smile. now that smile was frozen for ever on her cold lips, and a strange restlessness possessed him. he had meant to stay a few days with agatha in her new home, but he felt as if the inaction would drive him mad, so he hurried away; and a week afterward aunt irene showed agatha his name in the passenger list of a european steamer.
it was june then, and the gay summer went on working its daily miracles round agatha's quiet home. bright birds sang to her, and gay flowers bloomed for her picking; and nature ran riot in a wood a quarter of a mile away, where the flowers asked no leave of aunt irene to blow, or the birds to sing. the child used to go there when her daily tasks were done, but she carried with her so sad a heart that nothing seemed to cheer her. she wondered what all the growing things were so glad about, in the summer weather, and, remembering[pg 92] an old phrase she had heard, she concluded it was because nature was their mother, and nature never died.
"oh, mother nature, i wish you were a relative of mine!" she used to cry, sometimes, with unconscious quaintness; but before the summer was over, leaning her head so much on the mosses, a sense of kinship began to thrill in her pulses, and before she knew it the pain in her heart was eased a little, and she began to think of her mother, not as buried up and hidden away from her, but as near to her and waiting for her.
meantime she never forgot her father's words,—"womanly and helpful,"—they were the keynote of her life. aunt irene wondered at her. she had thought her a mischievous little elf in the old days, but there was no mischief in her now. she herself respected no more religiously the rules of the household than did this little quiet child.
as for trouble, why the creature gave none,—she was learning to do every thing for herself. at last even aunt irene grew half frightened at this still patience, which she felt must be unnatural to[pg 93] childhood. she began to wish that she could hear agatha laugh or shout,—that sometimes the child would tear her gowns, when she had on her oldest ones, at least,—that she would show some self-will, some little trace of her descent from apple-eating adam of the old time.
she wrote to her brother how good and quiet his little girl was; but her heart misgave her. she did not know what more she could do to make her small inmate comfortable, but she had a vague sense that agatha was living an unchildlike life, and was less happy than in the old days when the little girl and her mother came there together.
mother nature has her own methods of exacting compensation, and for agatha's overstrained and unnatural life pay-day came in the autumn. it had grown too cold to lie with her ear on the mosses, listening to the earth's pulse-beats, and the child sat quietly within doors, until one day she turned very pale and rolled off her stiff, straight chair to the carpet, and aunt irene picked her up, a lighter weight now than in the spring-time, and carried her to her room.
[pg 94]
dr. greene was sent for at once, and he looked at his little patient very gravely, and then whispered "typhoid" to her aunt.
aunt irene wrote a hurried line to agatha's father, and then took up her post at the bedside, which for five weeks she scarcely left. she had a heart, only long ago she had concluded it was an inconvenience and locked it up; but now it broke loose from its confinement and half frightened her by its throbbings.
her brother was very dear to her. she had loved him all his life, after the deep, silent, undemonstrative fashion of those who love but few; and now if this fresh grief was to come upon him how could she bear to see him suffer? but she did not allow these thoughts to interfere with her usefulness at agatha's bedside. day and night she watched over the child, who never once knew her, but who constantly mistook her for her mother, and clung to her passionately in the delirium of her fever.
"o mother!" she would say, "i thought i never, never should see you again. no one was[pg 95] cross to me, mamma darling; but no one loved me since you went away. i've been trying to grow womanly and helpful, so papa would be glad to have me with him by and by; but now you've come and you'll love me whether i'm good or not."
then again she seemed roaming through the woods.
"hark," she would say, "hear how the birds sing, and see the gay flowers swing in the wind! their mother doesn't die, and they have no aunts. o birdies! you don't know how cold aunt irene's lips are."
and aunt irene, listening, bent over the bed with tears blinding her eyes. had her life been all a failure? she asked herself. she had tried to do her duty: was it all nothing, because she hadn't loved? oh! if agatha would but get well she would find some way to make her happy.
before the crisis of the child's fever came, her father had arrived. the letter found him in paris, and he had set out in twenty-four hours upon his homeward journey.
[pg 96]
"is she alive?" he asked, when his sister met him at the door, and started back, shocked by his haggard face.
"yes, she lives, and the doctor says her fever must turn soon. come and see her."
the little flushed face had never been so beautiful in its brightest days of health and joy, as now, with the clustering rings of hair framing in scarlet cheeks and large, strangely brilliant eyes. the father's heart almost broke as he stood there, unable to make her recognize his presence. while he watched, she said what she had said so often during the hours of that wasting sickness,—
"i have tried to be womanly and helpful. i think papa will want me after awhile. i hope so for aunt irene's lips are cold."
how keenly he reproached himself then for having left her, only god knew. he was a silent man, as i have said, and silently he shared aunt irene's vigil without even thinking of rest after his journey.
the next night dr. greene waited also by that bedside for the crisis he foresaw. at last the child slept.
[pg 97]
"when she wakes we shall know what to expect," he said, and went away into the next room for a little rest. but the father and the aunt never moved. it was midnight, and every thing was strangely, unnaturally still, as it always seems to watchers in the middle of the night, when they heard agatha call out of the hush and the stillness, with a sudden, glad cry of recognition,—
"o mamma! mamma!"
"is she dying?" mr. raymond's look asked, for his lips refused to speak, and his sister's face made answer, "not yet."
the hours, the long, slow hours went on. the night grew darker and deeper. then above the hills there stretched a faint line of dawn-light which deepened at length to rose, and then was shot through by a golden arrow from the rising sun. and then, as the dawning glory touched the little white, still face upon the pillows, the eyes opened, and a voice—agatha's own natural voice, but oh, so faint and low!—said, softly but gladly,—
[pg 98]
"i have seen mamma. i wanted to go with her, but she said papa and aunt irene both needed me, and i was to stay here and grow well and happy. and so i shall."
"and so, please god, you shall," dr. greene said, cheerily, having come in from the next room; and the father sank upon his knees by the bedside, with some murmured words, which only the father in heaven understood, upon his lips; and aunt irene hurried off, she said, to get something for the child to take, but she stopped a long time upon the way.
"i knew you were here, papa," and agatha reached out her thin little fingers to touch the bowed head beside her. "i knew, because mamma told me."
strangely enough, all her timidity had vanished. mamma had said that papa and aunt irene needed her, and that was enough. soon her aunt came in, and she looked up, gratefully.
"you have been so good to me, aunt irene," she said, "so good that i thought it was mamma who was tending me, but i know now it was you,[pg 99] and i think you must love me, because you have kept me alive."
and so my story of agatha's lonely days ends; for after this she never was lonely any more. her father and aunt had learned that little hearts need something more than to be clothed and fed; and agatha had learned, by their care for her, their love for her, and never doubted again that she had her own place in their hearts.
but had she seen her own mamma? you ask. ah, who knows the mysteries of the border land between life and death? some of you will believe that she but dreamed a dream; and others, perchance, will think the father, who has so often sent his angels to comfort his earthly children, sent to her the home-faced angel whom her heart loved. i cannot tell. i only know that agatha believed always that a beloved voice not of this world had spoken to her.
