She was silent so long that Waymark spoke again.
"Your mother died when you were eleven!"
"Yes, and that was when my life began. My mother was very poor, but she managed to send me to a pretty good school. But for that, my life would have been very different; I should not have understood myself as well as I always have done. Poor mother,—good, good mother! Oh, if I could but have her now, and thank her for all her love, and give her but one year of quiet happiness. To think that I can see her as if she were standing before me, and yet that she is gone, is nowhere, never to be brought back to me if I break my heart with longing!"
Tears stood in her eyes. They meant more than she could ever say to another, however close and dear to her. The secret of her mother's life lay in the grave and in her own mind; the one would render it up as soon as the other. For never would Ida tell in words of that moment when there had come to her maturing intelligence clear insight into her mother's history, when the fables of childhood had no longer availed to blind her, and every recalled circumstance pointed but to one miserable truth.
"She's happier than we are," Waymark said solemnly. "Think how long she has been resting."
Ida became silent, and presently spoke with a firmer voice.
"They took her to a hospital in her last illness, and she died there. I don't know where her grave is."
"And what became of you? Had you friends to go to?"
"No one; I was quite alone.—We had been living in lodgings. The landlady told me that of course I couldn't stay on there; she couldn't afford to keep me; I must go and find a home somewhere. Try and think what that meant to me. I was so young and ignorant that such an idea as that I might one day have to earn my own living had never entered my mind. I was fed and clothed like every one else,—a good deal better, indeed, than some of the children at school,—and I didn't know why it shouldn't always be so. Besides, I was a vain child; I thought myself clever; I had even begun to look at myself in the glass and think I was handsome. It seemed quite natural that every one should be kind and indulgent to me. I shall never forget the feeling I had when the landlady spoke to me in that hard, sharp way. My whole idea of the world was overset all at once; I seemed to be in a miserable dream. I sat in my mother's bedroom hour after hour, and, every step I heard on the stairs, I thought it must be my mother coming back home to me;—it was impossible to believe that I was left alone, and could look to no one for help and comfort."
"Next morning the landlady came up to me again, and said, if I liked, she could tell me of a way of earning my living. It was by going as a servant to an eating-house in a street close by, where they wanted some one to wash up dishes and do different kinds of work not too hard for a child like me. I could only do as I was advised; I went at once, and was engaged. They took off the dress I was wearing, which was far too good for me then, and gave me a dirty, ragged one; then I was set to work at once to clean some knives. Nothing was said about wages or anything of that kind; only I understood that I should live in the house, and have all given me that I needed. Of course I was very awkward. I tried my very hardest to do everything that was set me, but only got scolding for my pains; and it soon came to boxes on the ear, and even kicks. The place was kept by a man and wife; they had a daughter older than I, and they treated her just like a hired servant. I used to sleep with the girl in a wretched kitchen underground, and the poor thing kept me awake every night with crying and complaining of her hard life. It was no harder than mine, and I can't think she felt it more; but I had even then a kind of stubborn pride which kept me from showing what I suffered. I couldn't have borne to let them see what a terrible change it was for me, all this drudgery and unkindness; I felt it would have been like taking them into my confidence, opening my heart to them, and I despised them too much for that. I even tried to talk in a rough rude way, as if I had never been used to anything better—"