“Your aunt is upstairs in the back bedroom,” said the neighbour, who had told the story as quietly as she could, as gently as its tragedy allowed.
Rosalie pulled herself together and went upstairs, trying the bedroom door at the back. It opened, and she was thankful. Her aunt sat in a chair, her head buried in the pillow of the one spare bed. Rosalie went to her and touched her shoulder. The elder woman moved slowly, and then sat up, smoothing her grey hair.
“I’ve been here long enough,” she said dully. “I must go and see to things. Sit here, Rosalie. It isn’t for you to be about.”
Her dull grief repelled all sad advances. From the time that Rosalie found her lying there cramped against the bed she showed no further signs of weakness, no further signs of giving in, till the funeral was over.
Then when the blinds were drawn up once more, and the November light had flooded the room, she took her foster daughter in her arms and wept as only a broken-hearted woman growing old can weep.
“We went to school together,” she said at last, twisting her wet soiled handkerchief around her fingers. After that she scarcely mentioned her husband again.
But now time showed a great difference in the little household, in addition to its greatest loss. Money troubles and worry, of late months thickening ominously, had helped to bring about the sudden end. There were no more happy meals at tea-time, no bread to toast, nothing but the barest, rude necessities of life. For they were poor, so poor that they scarcely knew how to look the future in the face. Both were very helpless.
The elder woman in a few short months had grown old, shrunken, and thin. She tried at times to smile bravely, to take interest in life and neighbours, but life and interest had gone for her in the old playfellow and life love. And more and more each day since her uncle’s death Rosalie felt the want of speech. She could give none of that bright assistance that was needed. No better than a living shadow she was bound to go about the house. Yet still she went to the temple to pray in humility and faithfulness.
And then, as the spring came round, she heard vague, disquieting rumours of the little house being shut up. Her aunt was going to live with a married brother, whose wife had little in common with her, and she herself, Rosalie, was to be sent to a Home for the Deaf and Dumb and Blind, a large charitable institution, greatly enlarged and improved upon by the munificence of a dead millionaire, one Geoffrey Todbrook by name. Insufferable thought! To separate her from the only human being she had learnt to love, shutting them each within a dungeon of strangers! “O God! O Serpent!” What of the prayer of months, to give one atom in the multitude the powers of speech? Prayer of presumption! Its punishment the taking away of everything that makes some lives worth living, the precious gift of freedom.
And yet Rosalie set her lips hard, there was no drooping, and went once more, with faith supremely high, but heart all wrong and tortured, to kneel and pray to God within the temple.