“Oh, that will be nice,” she sighed. “Are you coming to bed now?”
“You run along, Louise,” put in her father. “I guess Nellie and I will have a bit of a talk before she comes up. She’ll want to know all about mother, you know.”
The two children withdrew, and Cornelia tried to forget herself once more and bring her reluctant thoughts to her immediate future and the task that was before her.
“What is the matter with mother?” she asked suddenly, her thoughts still half impatient over the interruption to her career. It was time she understood more definitely just what had come in to stop her at this important time of her life. She wished that mother herself had written; mother never made so much of things, although of course she didn’t want to hurt her father by saying so.
“Why, she was all run down,” said Mr. Copley, a shade of deep sadness coming over his gray face. “You see she had been scrimping herself for a long time, saving, that the rest of us might have more. We didn’t know it, of course, or we would have stopped it.” His voice was shamed and sorrowful. “We found she hadn’t been eating any meat,”—his voice shook like an old man’s,—“just to—save—more for the rest of us.”
Cornelia looked up with a curl on her lip and a flash in her eyes; but there was something in her father’s broken look that held back the words of blame that had almost sprung to her lips, and he went on with his tale in a tone like a confession, as if the burden of it were all on him, and were a cloak of shame that he must wear. It was as if he wanted to tell it all at its worst.
“She didn’t tell us, either, when she began to feel bad. She must have been running down for the last three years; in fact, ever since you went away. Though she never let on. When Molly had to go home to her folks, your mother decided not to try to keep a servant. She said she could get along better with sending out the washing, and servants were a scarce article, and cost a lot. I didn’t want her to; but you know how your mother always was, and I had kind of got used to letting her have her own way, especially as about that time I had all I could do night and day at the office to try to prevent what I saw was coming for the business. She worked too hard. I shall never forgive myself!” He suddenly buried his face in his hands, and groaned.
It was awful to Cornelia. She wanted to run and fling her arms about his neck and comfort him; yet she couldn’t help blaming him. Was he so weak? Why hadn’t he been more careful of the business, and not let things get into such a mess? A man oughtn’t to be weak. But the sight of his trouble touched her strangely. How thin and gray his hair looked! It struck her again that he looked aged since she had seen him last. It gave her the effect of a cold douche in her face.
“Don’t father!” she said, her voice full of suppressed pain, and a glint of tenderness.
“Well, I know I oughtn’t to trouble you this way, daughter,” he said, looking up with a deprecatory smile; “but somehow it comes over me how much she suffered in silence before we found it out, and then I can’t stand it, especially when I think what she was when I married her, so fresh-faced and pretty with brown hair and eyes just like yours. You make me think a lot of her, daughter. Well, it’s all over, thank the Lord,” he went on with a sigh, “and she’s on the mend again. You don’t know what it was to me the day of the operation.”