Scene 1
Clara. Her Mother.
Clara.
Your wedding-dress? Oh, how well it suits you! It might have been made to-day!
Mother.
Yes, child, the fashion runs on, till it can’t get any further, and has to turn back. This dress has gone out of fashion ten times already, and has always come in again.
Clara.
But not quite, this time, mother. The sleeves are too wide. Don’t be cross with me now!
Mother (smiling).
No, I should be you if I were!
Clara.
And so that’s what you looked like! But surely you wore a garland, too?
Mother.
I should think so! Why else do you suppose I tended the myrtle-bush in the flower-pot all these years?
Clara.
I’ve asked you so many times, and you would never put it on. You always said, “It’s not my wedding-dress now, it’s my shroud, and not to be played with.” I began at last to hate the sight of it, hanging all white there, because it made me think of your death and of the day when the old women would pull it over your head. What’ve you put it on for, to-day, then?
Mother.
When you’re as ill as I’ve been, and don’t know whether you’ll get better or not, lots of things go round in your head. Death is more terrible than people think. Death is bitter-hard. He darkens the world, he blows out all the lights, one after another, that gleam so bright and gay all round us. The dear eyes of husband and children cease to shine, and it grows dim on every side. But death sets a light in the heart, and there it grows clear, and you can see lots—lots that you can’t bear to see.... I don’t know what wrong I’ve done. I’ve trodden God’s path, and worked in the house as well as I could. I’ve brought up your brother and you in the fear of the Lord, and eked out what your father earned with the sweat of his brow. And I always managed to have a penny to spare for the poor. If I did turn one away at times because I was cross-tempered, or because there were too many of them, it was no misfortune for him, for I was sure to call him back and give him double. But what’s all that worth! We tremble just the same, when the last hour threatens. We cringe like worms. We pray to God for our lives, like a servant asking his master to let him do a spoiled job over again, so as not to come short on pay-day.
Clara.
Do stop that, mother dear, it exhausts you.
Mother.
Child, it does me good. Am I not strong and healthy again? Didn’t God simply call me to make me see that my garment was not yet spotless and pure, and didn’t He let me turn back at the mouth of the grave, and give me time to adorn myself for the heavenly bridal? He was not as lenient as that to those seven virgins in the Gospel that I made you read to me last night. That’s why I’ve put this dress on to-day, to go to holy communion in. I wore it on the day when I made my best and purest vows. Let it remind me of those I didn’t keep.
Clara.
You are talking just as you did in your illness!