"For me," she said to herself as she bent her head into the smother of wind-driven snow, "life ended there in that office—when he died. If I had just myself to consider I don't think God would blame me much for ending it."
But it was not only herself she had to consider. The doctors told her that her mother's tenuous life strand might snap at any time in sudden death or might stretch indefinitely in helplessness and dethroned reason. Even in the mean lodgings they occupied other tenants were sometimes prone to the drawing of lines, and Mary knew that the landlord did not regard it as helpful to his business to have "a crazy lady in the house. Some guests objected." So when she began falling into arrears she did not delude herself with false hopes of charitable indulgence. Her father, too, though he had dropped down the scale of life to a forlorn old man who loafed his hours away in saloons until he was turned out, was still her father and while breath remained in his disreputable body his stomach required food as well as drink.
The girl went in at the dark door of the house, which was not greatly different from a tenement, and climbed the double flight of stairs. From a place by the window her mother looked up from her chair where she sat incessantly rocking. She held in her lap an old blank book and her expression was vacant.
"I've just been reading Ham's diary," she querulously announced. Mary shuddered. Of late her mother was always reading that old record of boyhood ambitions, which to her was always new since no memory—save those of other years—outlasted the hour.
"Ham thinks he's going to be a great man some day and I hope he's right. He's a good boy and a dutiful son and—"
But the daughter was not listening. Her eyes had encountered an envelope on the dresser mirror, and, as she tore the end of it, she felt a premonition of its contents.
"How about some money on account?" questioned the writer. "Unless I get some by tomorrow, I want my rooms vacated."
So the ultimatum had come. Mary Burton stood before the mirror for a moment and out of her body all the strength seemed to flow. Her knees shook, and her hands grew moist and chilly. Lest her sudden weakness be apparent to her mother she turned and went wearily into the other room. There she sat on the edge of her bed and tried to think.
"Tomorrow!" She dully repeated. "Tomorrow we are put out—then a public asylum for my mother—and the street or the almshouse for my father." Even now she was not thinking of herself. If it came to that she still believed God would not resent her opening for herself the single door of escape.
But these two old and helpless people! To Mary they were desperate burdens, but perhaps that only made her love them the more, and fight for them the more loyally.