A Cry in the Wilderness

by Mary E. Waller

XVIII

"And what next?" I asked myself after my head was on the pillow and while staring hour after hour at the opposite wall. Surely I had read enough of love! I had imagined what it might be like, even if I had never experienced it, even if I had thought little enough about it in connection with myself. I did not know it on what might be called the positive side, but I seemed to have some knowledge of it negatively. I knew it could be cruel, cruel as death; my own mother was a dead witness to that. I knew it could be brutal when passion alone means love; I was eye witness to this on Columbia Heights not so very long ago. I knew, or thought I knew, that it could be killed, or rather worn to a thread by the slow grinding of adverse circumstance. I recalled my own lack of affection after the years of sacrifice for the imbecile grandfather, my shiftless aunt.

And now, in the face of such knowledge, to have this revelation! This sudden absorption in another of my humankind; all my thought at once, without warning, transferred to that other wherever he might be; all interest in life centering with the force of gravity in that other's life; "at home" only in that other's presence; at rest only by his side—

"Now, look here, Marcia Farrell, don't you be Jane Eyrey," I said to myself in a low but stern voice. I sat up in bed and drew the extra comforter about my shoulders. "No nonsense at your age! You accept the fact that you love this man,—and you will have to whether you want to or not,—a man who has never spoken a word of love to you, who has treated you with the consideration, it is no more, no less than that, which he shows to every member of his household. Now, make the most of this fact, but without showing it. Don't make the youthful mistake, since you are no longer a girl, of fancying he is reciprocating what you feel, feeling your every feeling, thinking your every thought. And, above all, don't betray your self at this crisis of your life, to him or any member of his household—not to Delia Beaseley, not to Doctor Rugvie. Rest in his presence when you can. Rejoice to be near him—but inwardly, only, remember that!—when you shall find opportunity, but don't make one; discipline yourself in this, there will be need enough for it. 'Stick to your sure trot'; give full compensation in work for your wages—and enjoy what this new life may offer you from day to day. This new joy is your own; keep it to yourself. Now lie down for good and all, and go to sleep."

Thereupon I snugged down among the welcome warmth of the bed-clothes, saying to myself:

"I don't care 'what next'. I am so happy—happy—happy—"

But, even as I spoke that word softly—oh, so softly!—laying the palm of my right hand, that still felt the strong throbbing of his, under my cheek, I remembered that Cale had never once called me by the name he had proposed, "Happy"; that Jamie noticed the omission and remarked on it.

And what did Cale know? What could he know? There used to be a family of Marstins in our town before I was born. My aunt told me once that her sister married into the family; that, too, was before I was born. I never knew any one of the name, and I never cared to look at the old family headstones. The churchyard, because it held my mother, was hateful to me.

And I? I was too cowardly to ask Cale why he omitted to call me by his chosen name; for by that name my mother was known among her own, so I was told—that mother whom I never knew, whose memory I never loved, of whom I was ashamed because people said she had belied her womanhood.

But ever since Delia Beaseley opened my eyes to a portion of the truth concerning her, I had felt great pity for her. Now, at the thought of her, dying for love, for this very thing that had come to me like lightning out of the blue, dying without friends in that dull basement in V—— Court, my heartstrings contracted, literally, for I experienced a feeling of suffocation.

"Mother, oh, mother," I cried out under my breath, "was it for this, that I know to be love, you gave your all, even life itself? Oh, I have understood so little—so little; I have been so hard, mother. I did n't know—forgive me, mother—forgive, I never knew—"

It eased me to speak out these words, although I knew that in giving utterance to them my ears were the only ones the sound of my pleading could reach. Those ears, on which the word mother would have fallen so blessedly, would never hear, could never hear. Not so very far away, in northern New England, the snows lay white and deep, as white and deep as in Canada, on her neglected grave.

Something Delia Beaseley quoted from my mother in her hour of trial flashed again into consciousness: "The little life that is coming is worth all this." And my mother must have said it knowing all the joy, the bliss, the suffering, both of body and of soul, that this love must in due time bring to her daughter, because she was a woman-child.

What a Dolorous Way my mother must have trodden, must have been willing to tread for this!

There are minutes, rare in the longest lives, when life becomes so intensified that vision clears almost preternaturally, sees through telescopic lenses, so to speak. At such moments, the soul becomes so highly sensitized that it may photograph for future reference the birth or passing of Love's star.