Mrs. Irving changed her residence, putting many hundred miles between her new and the old home, so that Vida might begin life anew, as she phrased it, without embarrassment. In a large hotel in the great city, with seaside and mountain trips, parties and operas was much more to Vida's taste than dull life in a quiet parsonage, and she expected to play the role of a pastor's wife.
With her mother as chaperon she led a gay life, going, coming, revelling at will in her freedom. As before her marriage, she attracted much attention. Admired and courted, suitors innumerable paid her homage. But a positive nature and strong will asserted themselves here. Only such attentions as befitted a wife to receive were tolerated. She knew the law did not count her free; and if she had analyzed her secret heart, there was no true reason why she cared to be free. No face she met had power to quicken her pulses or extract from her a second thought. The inner heart had long ago been pre-empted, but the blind wilful creature knew it not. The face most often seen in her dreams; the voice that whispered in her ear; the sad dark eyes that seemed to follow her reproachfully, belonged to none of the gay gallants about her. Her previous history being unknown she was a problem in that circle.
There came a change. Mrs. Irving's health began to fail. The eminent physicians far and near were consulted in vain; and as the symptoms became more denned and alarming, Vida could not shut her eyes to the fact that her mother was in a most critical state. She was a devoted daughter, though the weeds of selfishness, fostered by the mother's hand, at times almost overtopped filial affection. Now she shut herself in from society and devoted herself to her mother with unremitting care. Every whim of the invalid was gratified.
One day, after weary months of suffering, she said: "O Vida dear, I would pray to die, if I were not afraid."
"Why afraid, mother? I'm sure you've been a member of a church these many years, and a faithful attendant on its services, and you have been kind to the poor and such a dear mother," said Vida, caressing her. "I don't think you need be afraid."
"O child, that will not stand in the great day. Don't mention anything I've done or been, I beg you," moaned the poor mother. "I've been nothing but a miserable worldling. Now I'm almost through with it all, and I've no peace or comfort. It's all dark, dark. O what shall I do?"
"Let me send for Dr. Hines," said Vida.
"O I cannot talk to him. He's a stranger; and I'm so weak. What must
I do, O what?"
Vida had been a member of the same church. But now she sat wrapped in gloom, feeling powerless to help, yet longing to comfort her dying mother. In the midst of her sad thoughts as she sat watching, while gentle slumber had stolen for a moment over the mother, she remembered the words of a text she had heard her husband preach from, "What must I do to be saved?" The sermon was all gone.
"If it asks that question in the Bible, it must answer it," she thought. So finding a Bible, she sat down to search for the old answer to the old question.