Mrs. Gilman’s face lighted as she looked after him. She had been listening to her husband’s plans, clearer, and more capable of being carried out, than most of them, showing that some one else had been assisting to make them. Mr. Gilman had persuaded himself, with this adviser’s assistance, that he would be perfectly right in selling the remnant of the farm, with the house, to pay for his passage and outfit to California. “As he only went to make money for his wife and children, they ought not to complain,” he reasoned, “and he would return so soon, to give them all that heart could wish. Meantime,” he said he would leave them something, and by time winter came he would send money from California. Mrs. Gilman well knew that she must be the entire dependence of her family, however fair all might seem in prospect.
CHAPTER III.
THE MOTHER AND SON.
But this was not the thought that weighed heaviest, when all but Mrs. Gilman had forgotten their plans and their pleasures in sleep.
As she sat alone by the broad flagging of the hearth, she could hear the heavy breathing of her husband in the next room, the ceaseless ticking of the clock, the purr of the cat, in its warm corner by the ashes. Overhead were her sleeping children, she alone, watchful and anxious. Slowly the old clock marked the passing hour, the brands mouldered with a dim redness, then broke, and fell with a shower of sparks upon the hearth. The rising wind rattled the loose window frames, the cold snow drifted upon the sill, white and chilling. She had kept many a midnight watch since she had been a wife, but this was the dreariest of all. She did not bury her face in her hands, and sob—her habitual industry had retained the coarse stocking, and her hands moved rapidly to the monotonous click of the needles, while hot tears gathered slowly in her eyes, and plashed down upon them. She did not wipe them away,—she did not know they were there. She was thinking over all the long time since her marriage; how very happy she had been at first, with her dear baby in the cradle, and her young husband, so fond of her and his first born, and the gradual and entire change that had since come over him and over their home. She had never ceased to hope through it all, that the time would come when he should be given back to her “in his right mind.” How earnestly she had prayed for it, sitting there, watching patiently night after night, trying to keep cheerful through all things; to make his home pleasant for him, when he least deserved it. And this was the end. She knew he was going, she felt it from that first abrupt announcement, and with the perils of the sea, and that new country, he might not return. She must go out from that old homestead, must see even the very burial-place owned by others, and he who had promised to love and protect her was the cause of all. It was hard to put down the bitter, reproachful feeling that had tempted her before, and to think of him with love, of God’s will, with submission and hope. Then came a picture of her husband, suffering, sick, dying on that long journey, for she knew how his health had been weakened, and how little fitted he was to bear exposure. This was terrible. If some friend, some one she could trust, was going with him, instead of that bad man, she could bear it better.
A noise that she would not have noticed in the stir of daylight, made her look up. It was only her boy’s cap, which he had hung carelessly behind the door, falling from the nail. “How strong and well he is,” thought the lonely woman—“why could not he go, and take care of his father?”
When she first tried to reason with herself about the future, he had seemed her only comfort and stay. Must she give him up too?
Mrs. Gilman did not often act from impulse, but she had become restless, and eager, thinking these things over. She took the candle, already burned to the very socket, hurried up the narrow winding stairs leading from the room in which she sat, to the “garret chamber,” chosen by her boy as his winter sleeping room, for the greater convenience of disposing of and watching over his hoard of treasures. They were few enough, but invaluable to him. The ears of corn he had saved for parching, hung by their braided husks, the soft pine blocks, prepared for whittling,—his skates, his new sled, not yet trusted to the doorless barn, the pile of hickory nuts in the corner, were nearly all that he owned; but no money could have purchased him more valued possessions.
The boy was sleeping soundly after the day’s hard work and exercise. His mother put down the light upon the chest that served him for a table, and sat down upon the bed beside him. He looked very beautiful to her, his long brown hair thrown back over the pillow, and his face flushed with a red glow of health. One arm was thrown above his head in a careless, graceful way, the brown hand bent, as if reaching to grasp a branch above him. Should she, who had held him in her arms, with the first prayerful thrill of a mother’s love, innocent and pure, send him forth to contact with the world unshielded! To see vice, and perhaps crime in every form—to be the companion of those long familiar with it! But, surely, it was a sacred mission to watch over and care for an erring parent, perhaps to save him from still greater degradation. Would not God reward her for this loving sacrifice, by keeping him in the charge of all good angels!
Her strong faith trusted in this, as she knelt down, still watching his heaving chest, and laid her hand lightly in unconscious blessing upon his broad forehead. It may have been that blessing which bore him through strange trials and temptations. We know that those who ask “in faith,” nothing wavering, have their reward; and what can exceed the yearning faithfulness of a mother’s love?