RECONCILIATION
There had been a succession of rainy days in Davenport--dark, rainy days, which added to the gloom hanging over that house where they watched so intently by Ethie's side, trembling lest the life they prayed for so earnestly might go out at any moment, so high the fever ran, and so wild and restless the patient grew. The friends were all there now--James, and John, and Andy, and Aunt Barbara, with Mrs. Markham, senior, who, at first, felt a little worried, lest her son should be eaten out of house and home, especially as Melinda manifested no disposition to stint the table of any of their accustomed luxuries. As housekeeper, Mrs. Dobson was a little inclined at first to stand in awe of the governor's mother, and so offered no remonstrance when the tea grounds from supper were carefully saved to be boiled up for breakfast, as both Melinda and Aunt Barbara preferred tea to coffee, but when it came to a mackerel and a half for seven people, and four of them men, Mrs. Dobson demurred, and Melinda's opinion in requisition, the result was that three fishes, instead of one and a half smoked upon the breakfast table next morning, together with toast and mutton-chops. After that Mrs. Markham gave up the contest with a groan, saying, "they might go to destruction their own way, for all of her."
Where Ethelyn was concerned, however, she showed no stint. Nothing was too good for her, no expense too great, and next to Richard and Andy, she seemed more anxious, more interested than anyone for the sick girl who lay so insensible of all that was passing around her, save at brief intervals when she seemed for an instant to realize where she was, for her eyes would flash about the room with a frightened, startled look, and then seek Richard's face with a wistful, pleading expression, as if asking not to cast her off, not to send her back into the dreary world where she had wandered so long alone. The sight of so many seemed to worry her, for she often talked of the crowd at the Clifton depot, saying they took her breath away; and once, drawing Andy's face down to her, she whispered to him, "Send them back to the Cure, all but his royal highness"--pointing to Richard--"and Anna, the prophetess, she can stay."
This was Aunt Barbara, to whom Ethelyn clung as a child to its mother, missing her the moment she left the room, and growing quiet as soon as she returned. It was the same with Richard. She seemed to know when he quitted her side, and her eyes watched the door eagerly till he came back to her again. At the doctor's suggestion, all were at last banished from the sick-room except Aunt Barbara, and Richard, and Nick Bottom, as she persisted in calling poor Andy, who was terribly perplexed to know whether he was complimented or not, and who eventually took to studying Shakspere to find out who Bottom was. Those were trying days to Richard, who rarely left Ethie's bedside, except when it was absolutely necessary. She was more quiet with him, and would sometimes sleep for hours upon his arm, with one hand clasped in Aunt Barbara's, and the other held by Andy. At other times, when the fever was on, no arm availed to hold her as she tossed from side to side, talking of things at which a stranger would have marveled, and which made Richard's heart ache to its very core. At times she was a girl in Chicopee, and all the past as connected with Frank Van Buren was lived over again; then she would talk of Richard, and shudder as she recalled the dreary, dreadful day when the honeysuckles were in blossom, and he came to make her his wife.
"It was wrong, all wrong. I did not love him then," she said, "nor afterward, on the prairie, nor anywhere, until I went away, and found what it was to live without him."
"And do you love him now?" Richard asked her once when he sat alone with her.
There was no hesitancy on her part, no waiting to make up an answer. It was ready on her lips, "Yes, oh, yes!" and the weak arms lifted themselves up and were wound around his neck with a pressure almost stifling. How much of this was real Richard could not tell, but he accepted it as such, and waited impatiently for the day when the full light of reason should return and Ethie be restored to him. There was but little of her past life which he did not learn from her ravings, and so there was less for her to tell him when at last the fever abated, and his eyes met hers with a knowing, rational expression. Andy was alone with her when the change first came. The rain, which had fallen so steadily, was over, and out upon the river the sunlight was softly falling. At Andy's earnest entreaty, Richard had gone for a little exercise in the open air, and was walking slowly up and down the broad piazza, while Aunt Barbara slept, and Andy kept his vigils by Ethelyn. She, too, was sleeping quietly, and Andy saw the great drops of perspiration standing upon her brow and beneath her hair. He knew it was a good omen, and on his knees by the bedside, with his face in his hands, he prayed aloud, thanking God for restoring Ethelyn to them, and asking that they might all be taught just how to make her happy. A faint sound between a moan and a sob roused him and, looking up, he saw the great tears rolling down Ethie's cheeks, while her lips moved as if they would speak to him.
"Andy, dear old Andy! is it you, and are you glad to have me back?" she said, and then all Andy's pent-up feelings found vent in a storm of tears and passionate protestations of love and tenderness for his darling sister.
She remembered how she came there, and seemed to understand why Andy was there, too; but the rest was a little confused. Was Aunt Barbara there, or had she only dreamed it?
"Aunt Barbara is here," Andy said, and then, with the same frightened, anxious look her face had so often worn during her illness, Ethie said: "Somebody else has sat by me and held my head and hands, and kissed me! Andy, tell me--was that Richard?--and did he kiss me, and is he glad to find me?"
She was gazing fixedly at Andy, who replied: "Yes, Dick is here. He's glad to have you back. He's kissed you more than forty times. He don't remember nothing.''
"And the divorce, Andy--is the story true, and am I not his wife?"
"I never heard of no divorce, only what you said about one in your tantrums. Dick would as soon have cut off his head as got such a thing," Andy replied.
Ethelyn knew she could rely on what Andy said, and a heartfelt "Thank God! It is more than I deserve!" fell from her lips, just as a step was heard in the hall.
"That's Dick,--he's coming," Andy whispered, and hastily withdrawing he left the two alone together.
It was more than an hour before even Aunt Barbara ventured into the room, and when she did she knew by the joy written on Richard's face and the deep peace shining in Ethie's eyes that the reconciliation had been complete and perfect. Every error had been confessed, every fault forgiven, and the husband and wife stood ready now to begin the world anew, with perfect love for and confidence in each other. Ethie had acknowledged all her faults, the greatest of which was the giving her hand to one from whom she withheld her heart.
"But you have that now," she said. "I can truly say that I love you far betten than ever frank Van Buren was loved, and I know you to be worthy, too. I have been so wicked, Richard,--so wilful and impatient,--that I wonder you have not learned to hate my very name. I may be wilful still. My old hot temper is not all subdued, though I hope I am a better woman than I used to be when I cared for nothing but myself. God has been so good to me who have forgotten Him so long; but we will serve Him together now."
As Ethie talked she had nestled closer and closer to her husband, whose arms encircled her form and whose face bent itself down to hers, while a rain of tears fell upon her hair and forehead as the strong man,--the grave Judge and the honored Governor,--confessed where he, too, had been in fault, and craving his young wife's pardon, ascribed also to God the praise for bringing them both to feel their dependence on Him, as well as to see this day, the happiest of their lives.
Gradually, as she could bear it, the family came in one by one to see her, Mrs. Markham, Sen., waiting till the very last, and refusing to go until Ethelyn had expressed a wish to see her.
"I was pretty hard on her, I s'pose, and it would not be strange if she laid it up against me," she said to Melinda; but Ethie had nothing against her now.
The deep waters through which she had passed had obliterated all traces of bitterness toward anyone, and when her mother-in-law came in she feebly extended her hand and whispered: "I'm too tired, mother, to talk much, but kiss me once for the sake of what we are going to be to each other."
Mrs. Markham was not naturally a bad or a hard woman, either. She was only unfortunate that her ideas had run in one rut so long without any jolt to throw them out. Circumstances had greatly softened her, and Ethie's words touched her deeply.
"I was mighty mean to you sometimes, Ethelyn, and I've been sorry for it," she said, as she stooped to kiss her daughter-in-law, and then hurried from the room, "Only to think, she called me mother," she said to Melinda, to whom she reported the particulars of her interview with Ethelyn--"me, who had been meaner than dirt to her--called me mother, when I used to mistrust her she didn't think any more of me than if I'd been an old squaw. I shan't forget it right away."
Perhaps the sweetest, most joyful tears Ethelyn shed that day were those which came to her eyes when they brought her Ethelyn, her namesake, the little three-year-old, who pushed her brown curls back from her baby face with such a womanly air, and said:
"I'se glad to see Aunt Ethie. I prays for her ever' night. Uncle Andy told me so. I loves you, Aunt Ethie."
She was a beautiful little creature, and her innocent prattle and engaging manners did much toward bringing the color back to Ethie's cheeks and the brightness to her eyes. Those days of convalescence were blissful ones, for now there was no shadow of a cloud resting on the domestic horizon. Between husband and wife there was perfect love, and in his newly born happiness, Richard forgot the ailments which had sent him an invalid to Clifton, while Ethie, surrounded by every luxury which love could devise or money procure, and made each hour to feel how dear she was to those from whom she had been so long estranged, grew fresh, and young, and pretty again; so that when, early in December, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren came to Davenport to see her niece, she found her more beautiful far than she had been in her early girlhood, when the boyish Frank had paid his court to her. Poor little Nettie was dead. Her life had literally been worried out of her; and during those September days, when Ethelyn was watched and tended so carefully, she had turned herself wearily upon her pillow, and just as the clock was striking the hour of midnight, asked of the attendant:
"Has Frank come yet?"
"Not yet. Do you want anything?"
"No, nothing. Is mother here?"
"She was tired out, and has gone to her room to rest. Shall I call her?"
"No, no matter. Is Ethie in her crib? Please bring her here. Never mind if you do wake her. 'Tis the last time."
And so the little sleeping child was brought to the dying mother, who would fain feel that something she had loved was near her in the last hour of loneliness and anguish she would ever know. Sorrow, disappointment, and cruel neglect had been her lot ever since she became a wife, but at the last these had purified and made her better, and led her to the Saviour's feet, where she laid the little child she held so closely to her bosom, dropping her tears upon its face and pressing her farewell kiss upon its lips. Then she put it from her, and bidding the servant remove the light, which made her eyes ache so, turned again upon her pillow, and folding her little, white, wasted hands upon her bosom, said softly the prayer the Saviour taught, and then glided as softly down the river whose tide is never backward toward the shores of time.
About one Frank came home from the young men's association which he attended so often, his head fuller of champagne and brandy than it was of sense, and every good feeling blunted with dissipation. But the Nettie whose pale face had been to him so constant a reproach was gone forever, and only the lifeless form was left of what he once called his wife. She was buried in Mount Auburn, and they made her a grander funeral than they had given to her first-born, and then the household want on the same as ever until Mrs. Van Buren conceived the idea of visiting her niece, Mrs. Gov. Markham, and taking her grandchild with her. For the sake of the name she was sure the little girl would be welcome, as well as for the sake of the dead mother. And she was welcome, more so even than the stately aunt, whose deep mourning robes seemed to throw a kind of shadowy gloom over the house which she found so handsome, and elegant, and perfectly kept that she would willingly have spent the entire winter there. She was not invited to do this, and some time in January she went back to her home, looking out on Boston Common, but not until she had eaten a Christmas dinner with Mrs. Markham, senior, at whose house the whole family were assembled on that occasion.
There was much good cheer and merriment there, and Ethie, in her rich crimson silk which Richard had surprised her with, was the queen of all, her wishes deferred to, and her tastes consulted with a delicacy and deference which no one could fail to observe. And Eunice Plympton was there, too, waiting upon the table with Andy, who insisted upon standing at the back of Ethie's chair, just as he had seen the waiters do in Camden, and would have his mother ring the silver bell when anything was wanted. It was a happy family reunion, and a meet harbinger of the peaceful days in store for our heroine--days which came and went so fast, until winter melted into spring, and the spring budded into blushing summer, and the summer faded into the golden autumn, and the autumn floated with feathery snowflakes into the chilly winter and December came again, bringing another meeting of the Markhams. But this time it was at the governor's house in Davenport, and another was added to the number--a pretty little waxen thing, which all through the elaborate dinner slept quietly in its crib, and then in the evening, when the gas was lighted in the parlors, and Mr. Townsend was there in his gown, behaved most admirably, and lay very still in its father Richard's arms, until it was transferred from his to those of the clergyman, who in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost baptized it "Daisy Adelaide Grant."