We talked no more that night of matters that were personal. I gave my whole time and strength to help "bring her through", as Delia defined the state of things in regard to a girl, five years younger than I, "who had missed her footing".
It was an anxious week. There was delirium, despair, suicidal intent; but we "brought her through".
While watching by that girl's bedside, I relived that experience of my mother, the result of which was that I, Marcia Farrell, was there to help. In those night watches I had time for many thoughts. Cale's voice grew insistent, for the roar of the city was subdued at one and two in the morning:
"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you."
Over and over again I heard those words. The undertone of metropolitan life, when at its lowest vitality, went on and on.—Two o'clock, three. The girl on the bed grew quiet; delirium ceased. Four—I heard the rattle of the milk-carts and the truck gardeners' wagons coming up from the ferries.
"You are doing him a bitterer wrong than your mother before you." Over and over again I heard it.
Cale's voice was louder now, more and more insistent. All that day I heard it above the push-cart vendors' cries and the hurdy-gurdy's dance music, above the roar of the Second Avenue Elevated and the polyglot street clamor.
Yes, I had to acknowledge it: my mother had wronged him. I visualized that act in her life. I saw her promising to marry him, although she was unwilling. I saw her giving herself in marriage to him in the presence of the minister and her sick father. I saw her young husband creeping out in the night to watch for her shadow on the curtain. I saw him lying down to sleep a little after his vigil—but I could not see my mother when she left the house. Not until she made sunshine in the old manor, where I was conceived, not until she made sunshine in the forest for old André, could I see her again in her youth and beauty, in the enjoyment of her stolen bliss.
But I could see him whom she deserted. I saw him in the pasture among the colts. I saw him raving at being made her dupe; I saw him even raising his hand against Cale. I saw him in his fruitless search, east, west, north, south. I saw him leaving the very house in which I was watching. I saw him broken, changed, "cutting loose" from his old life, determined to relive in other conditions, in other lands. I saw him returning from that far Australian country to that house where my mother's steps had resounded on the old flagging in the passageway at Lamoral,—unknowing of her former presence there, unknowing that her daughter was there awaiting him,—to that place which I, also unknowing, had made home for him. I saw him living again in his love for me who was her daughter!—and he knew this! Knew I was her daughter.
How had he dared? And he her husband—my mother's husband! The thought was staggering.