Читать книгу A Silent Singer - Clara Morris - Страница 3

Table of Contents

It had been a hot day, and the minister had brought us, my mother and myself, from the city to his country home, in a mysterious, antediluvian species of buggy. Of all the race of men it is the country minister alone who can discover this particular breed of buggy. They are always gifted with strange powers of endurance; never being purchased until they have seemingly reached the point of dissolution, they will thereafter, for years and years, shake and totter, and rattle and rock, carrying all the time not only people but almost every conceivable kind of merchandise, from a few pounds of groceries to a pumpkin or a very youthful calf, without coming one step nearer their final wreck.

This special buggy could hold one person in comfort, two in discomfort and three in torture. I had been the party of the third part in that day’s ride, and worn out and crumpled and dusty, we passed from darkness into a room full of lamplight and faces. I was trying to support myself steadily upon a pair of legs so recently aroused from dumb sleep that they had barely reached the ticklish stage, and the ten thousand needle-prickling power was in full blast when the Rev. Hyler introduced me to his seven sons. My dazzled eyes and tired mind made them seem full seventeen to me, and they were so big and rough and noisy, I hung my head, confused, disappointed, frightened even, and then I felt the gentle pressure of her hot little hand on mine.

I raised my childish eyes and saw the sweetness of the smile upon her pallid face, saw it dawn upon her lips, pass swiftly to the dimple in her cheek, hide a moment there, only to reappear the next dancing in the sapphire blueness of her eyes—saw and mentally bowed down and worshipped her from that moment. Physically, I clung close to her burning hand and gave her back a smile of such astounding breadth and frankness as must have revealed to her my entire dental economy; and when, a few minutes later, I learned that she whispered because her voice was gone—lost forever, I felt such a passion of love and pity for her, such a longing to spare her suffering, that, but for its absurdity, I could have wounded my own flesh that I might bear the pain in her name. Grown-ups do not always understand the strength of feeling young things are capable of.

Next day we two round pegs began fitting ourselves into the new holes prepared for us, and though they were not absolutely square, they were still far enough from roundness to be very uncomfortable holes indeed. My mother began her never-ending duties of housekeeper. Mrs. Hyler had broken down from overwork and sick-nursing, and I having, as my mother once declared, “as many eyes as had a peacock’s tail,” began my almost unconscious observations of a new form of poverty. (I already had a really exhaustive knowledge of the subject both from observation and from personal experience, and I had come to the conclusion that the bitterness of poverty was greatly influenced by the manner in which it was accepted. I had known abject, ragged poverty to enjoy streaks of real merriment on comparatively comfortable occasions, while higher up in life those who openly acknowledged their poverty seemed only to suffer its inconvenience and to know nothing of the shame and humiliation of those who tried to hide theirs by agonizing makeshifts.) Here I found it was accepted in sullen silence, but, nevertheless, bitter resentment lowered on every face save my dear Miss Linda’s.

She always turned to those eighteen watchful, loving eyes a sweetly-smiling, pallid face with serene brows; but I saw her sometimes when smile and serenity were both gone and her face was anguished.

The Rev. Hyler, minister, farmer, father of seven sons, was himself a seventh son, and had he been examined at his birth with that closeness of scrutiny given to first-born babies, I’m positive the word “failure” could have been found plainly stamped upon his small person. He was a tall, gray, narrow man, and seemed always to have a bitter taste in his mouth. Black-coated, white-tied and pale, he seemed to have been pressed between the leaves of some old volume of sermons and left there till all the color and sap had dried out of him as it might dry out of a pressed violet or pansy. Perpetual ill-humor had stamped to the very bone the three-lined frown he wore between his eyebrows. He was an educated man and full of information—that was of no use to him. He could give statistics as to the number of the inhabitants of Palestine, but he could not tell whether an unsatisfactory field required topdressing or under-draining. He had been an instructor, a teacher; had, in fact, been at the head of one of the State colleges, but failed and came back, much embittered, to the small church he had left with such high hopes; but finding he had provided himself with more mouths than his salary could well fill he had taken to farming, at which he seemed to be the greatest failure of all.

Narrow and cold by nature, soured by disappointment, he loved but one person on earth, and that person was his first-born child, his only daughter, Linda. He admired her, he was proud of her, he loved her, truly and tenderly, beyond a doubt; but, alas, as surely beyond a doubt, his was a jealous and a selfish love, and she, with eyes whose power and penetration fully equalled their rare beauty of coloring, read him through and through, as she might have read a book! Saw the dry, gray man’s weakness of resolve, his bitter temper, his small tyrannies, and worse—far worse, because that was a most repellant sin—his hypocrisy; saw all these things and with no touch of sympathy for any one of them, but, with what seemed almost divine compassion, she gave him reverent service and such tender, loyal love as many a better father fails all his life to win.

And this sweet Linda, woman-grown—this young lady who had “come out,” and had had a season of social gaiety in the city—who—oh, wondrous being! had had real “for true” lovers—she stooped from her high estate to honor me with her attention, her conversation—even, to a certain point, her confidence—while I had only reached that humiliating stage in life where old ladies could refer to me as a “growing-girl.” And this condescension filled me with such joy—such stupendous pride—I marvel it did not precede a mighty fall. But, looking back upon it all, I think I see a pathetic reason for that unequal companionship. My mother, knowing me to be painfully sensitive to suffering or sorrow, kept from me the knowledge that the girl I so loved was slowly dying, a victim of that fell disease, consumption! Her days were so surely numbered that no one had the faintest hope that she would see the yellowing of the leaves that now danced greenly on the trees. I saw her pale and very, very fragile, and only loved her more. I saw her faint sometimes, but I had seen other women faint when I knew they were not ill, and, to my childish ideas, anyone who rose from her bed and dressed each day must surely be quite well. So it came about that in my eyes alone she belonged still to the world of the living—in my face alone could she read love without anxiety, and when she laughed, as she often did, it was only in my eye she found a hearty, gay response, for every other glance was full of anguished pity.

If my ignorance was not bliss, it was, at least, I truly think, a comfort to her, since by its help she could forget for a time, at least, that she was doomed and set aside as having nothing more to do with life. And my profound interest and naïf admiration egged her on to tell me of the gay, sweet past—such an innocent, pitifully short past it was—of her small triumphs and her pretty frocks. Sometimes she would even show me her few girlish trinkets, but I was quick to observe that if I ever asked about her future use of them a sort of shudder passed over her white face and her eyes would close quickly for a moment; then she would answer evasively, gently; yet there was a flatness in the tones of her voice, and she would surely remark, “that she would try now to doze a little.”

It was not long before my observation brought me closer to her tender heart, while slowly I learned, little by little, something of the weight of the cross this fragile girl was bearing on her trembling shoulders.

Mrs. Hyler was, I think, the most disconcerting person in this uncomfortable family. Her manner toward them was that of a moderately devoted housekeeper—head nurse, who presumed slightly by reason of her long service. The last scant drop of kindness—the last ray of warmth of affection—I dare not use a stronger word—was for her Linda! But we must remember that for four and twenty years she had listened to what the Rev. Hyler “was going to do,” and had suffered from what the Rev. Hyler “did not do,” and there was no hope left in her.

I shall not introduce her sons individually, but will simply state that between the Spanish-looking eldest one—brave, loyal, honest and kind—and the impish youngest, with the face of a blond seraph and a heart like a nether mill-stone, there were five others, each one striving to be—or so it seemed—as unlike his brothers as possible. In all their lives they had found but two subjects they could agree upon; on these, however, they were as one boy. Their honest, hearty love for “Sister Linda” was one subject, and a fixed determination to “get even” with their father was the other.

Linda Hyler loved music profoundly, and she had not only natural talent, but powers of concentration and a capacity for hard work that might have made an artist of her. And the poor child had had her opportunity—for one with means and power and the inclination to use them, attracted by the purity and volume of her voice and by her earnest ambition, had offered to assist her to that stern training, so difficult in those days to obtain, even when one had the money to pay for it. But if she had talent, she also had a father, and he with the bitter taste seemingly strong in his mouth, refused the kindly offer, giving no nobler reason for his act than that “she was his only daughter and he would miss her far too much.” She pleaded with him in vain, and had the pain of seeing her one opportunity float away from her, taking on, as it went, all the airy grace, all the glancing beauty of a bubble floating in the sunshine.

Had her father not provided so much material for its building, the cross she bore might not have been so heavy. Up to the time of our arrival, Linda had managed to sit a little while each day before the battered old organ that stood in an otherwise empty room. To any other family it would have been the parlor—to this family it was a thing without a name. But even as you have seen a timid, lonely woman appear at her window, whistling loudly and wearing a man’s hat—by means of which she convinces would-be burglars of the presence there of a large and very destructive man—so these parlor windows were well curtained, that the occasional humped-over, slow-driving passer-by might be convinced that this parlor held—(as much ingrain-horse-hair-worsted-crocheting, and high art plaster cats, with round black spots and heavy coats of varnish as any)—and I suppose that one trick was quite as convincing as the other—any way, there sat Linda in that dreary room, before the organ, drawing from its sulky and unwilling interior sounds of such solemn sweetness as made one pray involuntarily; and sometimes she played simply an accompaniment—sitting with lifted face and closed eyes, the veins swelling in her throat, but no sound coming from her moving lips. Already I had become her second shadow, and so I’d creep into the empty room after her, and listen to her playing, and once when I was greatly moved, she turned to me and said: “Little Sister”—the pet name she had graciously bestowed on me—“what does that make you think of?”

And without a pause I answered eagerly: “A church—not,” I hurriedly explained, “not our church, but a great one with pictures, and lots of people, and lights and sweet-smoke!”

Ah, how she laughed, and though it was but a husky whispering affair, it was still a very merry laugh, because of the light that danced so gaily to it in her eyes. She then informed me that the music had been a mere scrap from a famous oratorio, and that my “sweet-smoke” was called incense, and though she set me right, it was her harmless jest to use the word “sweet-smoke” herself ever after.

We had been there but a little while, when one day I noticed something wrong with the music; the tones were weak and wavering, there seemed to be no certainty in her touch. Her little hand could not hold a simple chord with firmness, and then the next moment there was a soft crash of the yellow, old keys, as Linda sank forward helpless and panting. I sprang to help her, and between two struggling, unwilling breaths, I heard her whisper: “Must this go too? Dear God! must this go too?”

By chance the little brother had been present. He called his mother, and presently Linda was on the sofa in the other room, and the inevitable farm-house remedy for all mortal ills, the camphor-bottle—or to use the rural term, the “camfire”—had been produced, and soon Linda raised her eyes and called up the old, sweet smile; while little Arthur stood with sturdy legs far apart—his hands in his small pockets, and his father’s own special brand of frown upon his brow—watching his sister’s restoration; then he remarked: “Linda, it was blowin’ wind into that d—blamed old organ, that busted yer all up just now!—so it was!—and after this yer just pull yer feet back out of the way, and I’ll crawl under there, and work them ‘pedal treadle things,’ and blow yer all the wind yer want—and if I blow so hard it busts the thing, papa darsent lick me, ’cause I’ll be doin’ it for you!” and he danced with malicious glee!

Next day he kept his word, and though Miss Linda played a little while, somehow the spirit seemed to have gone out of her music. But when Arthur came out on all-fours from under the instrument’s front, hot, red and tousled, his sister shook his little hand and thanked him and kissed him tenderly—and he, swelling with gratified pride and love, went out behind the smoke-house, where he swore a little for practice, and tried to kill the cat.

Next morning early, as I left our room, I glanced into Miss Linda’s, and saw it had not been put in order yet. Being ever eager to do something in her service, I thought I might slip in and beat up her pillows and place them in the sun as I had seen the “grown-ups” do. So in I went and, snatching up the nearest pillow, I gave a startled “Oh!” and stood staring, for beneath it lay the miniature of a man, whose questioning brown eyes looked up at me from a face young yet stern to the point of sombreness. My first impulse was to restore the pillow and run away, but next moment I noticed, lying close to the picture, all crumpled up into a little wad, Miss Linda’s handkerchief. I leaned over and touched it, and it was still damp with tears. A great lump rose in my throat and, though I was but a “growing-girl,” it was the heart of a woman that was giving those quick, hard blows in my breast and making me understand. I sprang across the room and softly closed the door. I said to myself: “Miss Linda loves him, and she is unhappy and grieves, and she does not wish them to know!”

I went to her bureau and took a fresh handkerchief from the drawer, then I took the miniature—it was on ivory, and, from its small, gold frame, I fancied it had been intended for an ornament—and slipped it into the velvet case I found near by; then I carefully rolled the case inside of the handkerchief and started downstairs, trying hard to look unconcerned as I entered the dining-room.

Breakfast had just been placed upon the table, and every one save Linda was moving toward it. A little, drooping figure still seated, she seemed very ill that morning, and the great, dark circles about her eyes looked like purple stains on her white face. I crossed directly to her, thus turning my back upon every one else, and leaning over her and thrusting my small package into her hand with a warning pressure of the fingers, I said: “I have brought a fresh handkerchief for you, Miss Linda—do you want it?”

The moment she touched the parcel she understood. Her eyes sent one startled glance toward her father—then she looked at me. The white weariness faded all away, and warmly, rosily I saw her love blossom sweetly in her face, while she answered: “Thank you, little sister—yes I want it,” and slipped the handkerchief into the pocket of her gown, just as her father pushed me impatiently aside that he might assist her to her place at table.

He instantly noted the color in her face and sharply exclaimed: “What’s this—what’s this! is this a feverish manifestation, at this hour of the day?”

And Linda smiled and charged him with “cultivating his imagination, instead of his corn,” and by the time she was in her place the color had faded, the waxen pallor was back upon her face, and the small incident had been safely passed.

Late that afternoon Linda was lying on, or perhaps I should say clinging to, the hard and slippery thing they called a sofa—Heaven save the mark! It was long and hard, and smoothly covered with shiny leather. It arched up in its middle over very powerful springs, and the springs and the slipperiness did the trick for every one. You could not snuggle on it to save your life, and if you attempted to be friendly with it and tried to rest your book or fan or smelling bottle beside you—hoop la!—with an intensity of malice known only to the inanimate enemy it would hitch up its back and fire everything off onto the floor well out of your reach—and if you showed any marked annoyance it would fire you after them. There was not a day that it did not shoot Miss Linda’s pillow from under her head, and twice I saw it slide her bodily to the floor.

I had found just one thing that could hold on to this slippery fiend, and that was a blanket—but who on earth wanted to lie on a blanket in the summer-time? So there Miss Linda lay on the glassy-surfaced “sofa,” with a chair pushed close up to it to prevent her sliding off, and I on the floor slowly fanning her and hoping she might be asleep, she was so very quiet. But no, she was not sleeping, for presently, without opening her eyes or making the least movement, she whispered: “Little sister, you saved three of us much grief and pain by your caution and your thoughtfulness to-day, and now, dear, I will explain about the picture.”

I turned hot and shame-faced, and rubbing my head upon her hands like an affectionate young puppy, I muttered confusedly, “that, if she pleased, I’d rather not!” But she smiled; not her family smile, but a sad, slow smile, and stroked my hair and went on gently: “It is right that you should know. He, the man of the miniature, was to have been my—” She stopped; she swallowed hard at something. She moistened her lips and started again: “He—at least, I was to have been his wife! I wore his ring—I—I—” Suddenly her eyes opened wide on mine, and she said with a sort of rush: “Child, child! Heaven will have to be a very glorious place to make me forget the happiness I knew with him! and I loved him so! oh, I loved him so!”

In a very transport of sympathy I broke in: “But he was good, I am sure he was! and he don’t look as if he were dead?”

She smiled kindly at me, and fully understood my blundering, hurried words: “Yes, dear,” she said, “you are right; he is not dead, and he is good! A little hard, perhaps—” Her eyes closed again. “Yes, perhaps, a little hard, but—well, men must be hard or they cannot succeed! We were very happy, dear! Papa—” Her brows drew together quickly for a moment;—“papa gave his consent. He—Roger—had a noble voice; we sang together at the church, we rode, we planned—we planned—” A pause, a long, long, shivering sigh, and then: “Papa changed his mind. I was not of age—even had I been, I had been bred up to such strict obedience—I—oh, I don’t know!—but Roger, he could not bear dependence on another man’s whims for two long years! He was one of the college professors; he needed quiet, regularity, positively settled plans, or the quality of his work might suffer! Papa broke his promise—he gave no reason. Roger said ‘he was jealous of us.’ I only know he broke his promise! Roger would not wait! Father commanded—he demanded! They were two angry men—I stood between them, dear—and I am crushed!”

“Oh,” I cried, “he did not love you hard enough, dear Miss Linda! What was enduring two years of Mr. Hyler compared to enduring a whole life without you?” It was not exactly a polite way to speak of the reverend gentleman or of her lover, and she laid her finger on my lips, as she resumed: “Papa does not understand—time has passed—but, oh, child, child!—each day of my life—I lose my love—each day the pain of it—is fresh and new! Had papa known of the picture to-day—he might have understood—he might have—suffered remorse—and he is old and—and—‘As we forgive those who trespass against us!’”

Her whisper died away on the last word; she lay quite still. I fanned her gently, slowly, and kissed her little, paper-dry hands now and then, and by-and-by the smile faded quite away, the sweet lips took a downward droop, the heavy waves of her brown hair made her face look piteously small and wasted, and, with hot tears dropping down into my lap, I took my first look at the real Linda. The little songster, with the song stopped in her throat! The loving little woman, with her heart crushed in her breast!—and as it was my first so it was my last look at that Linda, for it was the only time I ever saw her asleep, and when awake she was always on dress-parade, and wore her smile as an officer would his sword.

Shortly after this I began to worry, for though I was still in ignorance, even I could see that as these hot days went panting by each one of them took with it some small portion of dear Miss Linda’s strength. The dandelion in seed, lifting in air its phantom, downy globe, was scarcely whiter, lighter or more frail than she. Then I was worried about myself. The family were taking suddenly too deep an interest in me, my tastes and my desires. I was even asked what I would do under such and such circumstances, or how I would decide between this claim and that, and when I entered a room the “grown-ups” were almost sure, of late, to stop speaking, or they would clear their throats and speak of the weather with an elephantine lightness that could not deceive a goggle-eyed infant negotiating teeth with a rubber ring.

Once my very own mother, speaking excitedly, too, stopped short when I came in, and though I looked and looked at her with forty-horse questioning power in my eyes, she answered nothing, and my most penetrating and gimlet-like glance finally brought out a very brief, not to say sharp, suggestion that I sit down and stare at my spelling-book awhile—which, like most good advice, was neither kindly given nor willingly followed. So I was worrying, when one morning I stood listening to Miss Linda’s unspeakably sad music. She was playing with fervor and more strength than usual, and suddenly she was seized with a paroxysm of coughing. Instead of going to her at once, I ran into the next room for some troches that were on a table, and before I could return with them she had fallen and was lying motionless on the floor. My cry and the shouts of little Arthur gave the alarm. Mrs. Hyler entered first. She went very white, but she stooped and lifted Linda like a child, and I thought it strange that, as she carried her, she held a handkerchief to her face. Mr. Hyler appearing suddenly, exclaimed in excited tones: “Ice—ice! Salt—linen!” and, taking these exclamations as orders, I ran forward, intending to carry the message to my mother. At that moment Mrs. Hyler stretched out her hand to push the door more widely open, and on the breast of her light dress, just where Miss Linda’s head was resting, a great, red stain was slowly, evilly spreading. I glanced from it to the handkerchief in her hand, and it was red! red!! red!!! With stiffening lips, I whispered: “Miss Linda—oh, Miss Linda!” and suddenly there came a mighty roaring in my ears—a cold air on my face, and as I sank into the windy darkness, afar off I heard a voice cry: “There she goes! Catch the child—ah! she saw it all.”

Yes, in very truth I had seen all! And when, with a general sense of discomfort, I opened my eyes upon the sunlight again, I found myself attended by two of the seven sons, who cast water on me with lavish hand and pounded me with an affectionate brutality that left marks by which my fainting might be remembered for days after. I looked stupidly at them at first and wondered, and then I saw that great, red, growing stain beneath the wasted, white face, and I broke into such sobs as fairly frightened them. I was crouching on the top step of the porch, with my feet drawn up and my arms and head resting on my knees, and as I glanced downward I saw four bare, brown, boyish feet, and noted how restless they were. With my heart almost bursting with pain, some portion of my brain made a note of the fact that one of the four great toes before me had received a recent cut that must have been given by a hoe. Then the elder one thumped me kindly on the back and said: “Don’t, Carrie, don’t!”—and the other one said, in a husky voice: “Why, didn’t yo’ never know at all that sister Linda was a-goin’ to die?”

I gave an agonized cry at the words, and the elder boy exclaimed: “What did yer want to say that for? For two cents I’d give yer a good lickin’!”—while he, of the toe, said: “No, yer won’t give me a lickin’ for two cents, nor for one cent, neither!”

“Why won’t I?”

“Why didn’t Jack eat his supper, eh?”

And then they grabbed at each other over my head, but a grave voice said: “Boys, I never was so shamed by you before!”

It was Alfred, the eldest of the seven, and a “grown-up” himself. He paid no attention to their explanations—their recriminations; he simply stooped, and, lifting my shaking body in his arms, carried me into the house. As he was going up the narrow stairs a splash came on my cheek that was no tear of mine. A thrill went through me from head to foot—I lifted my swollen lids to look at him. His face wore that gray tint paleness brings to dark people, and in his always sad eyes I saw slow tears gathering. I buried my own face in his bosom, and laying my shaking, little hand across his eyes, I sobbed: “Don’t, oh, please don’t! She couldn’t bear it if she knew!”

He took me to my mother’s room and, placing me high against the pillows, deftly tied a wet handkerchief about my hot brows, and then he stood looking down at me for a moment before he said, with a quivering voice: “You know now, don’t you, Carrie?”

I nodded my head and wrung my hands silently. “Yes,” he went on, “she is going soon, dear—and—and—it’s rough! Good God! Carrie! if you could have seen her three years ago—if you could have heard her sing! I think sometimes my father is a devil! There—there—I didn’t mean to say that!—but see, dear, little girl!” He knelt down quickly by the bed and took my hands in his. He spoke rapidly—pressing my fingers tightly, to hold my attention: “They are going to ask you to do something—to-morrow, perhaps—this awful attack of Linda’s will hurry things—I can’t tell you what they will ask; I have not the time, but, Carrie, refuse! Don’t be badgered—don’t be coaxed—not even by darling Linda! One martyr is enough! Refuse, refuse! for, oh, we will be a hard lot when sister has left us!”

His body shook with sobs; for a moment he let his head rest on the edge of the bed. Then he rose and left the room to go to his own, where I heard him lock himself in. And that day ended my ignorance about Miss Linda’s fate, and it also ended Miss Linda’s music—she had played her last note.

That I had received a shock was evident to the whole family, and I heard the sick girl say to her father: “Wait, papa, dear, don’t speak to Carrie yet—give her a little time.”

But my grief was greater than my curiosity, and I never asked myself what he could have to speak to me about, or what he could possibly ask of me. I only thought of her—to fan her, hand her a drink, bring her a flower, carry a message, or, above all, during that afternoon hour, to crouch at her side and watch her “silent singing,” as I called it. She never seemed to do it before her mother or anyone but me. But while she was supposed to be taking a nap, and I fanned her quietly, she would lie, with closed eyes, and softly beat time with her shadowy hand, and her throat would swell and her lips move, but no sound came; and through much watching of her, with my heart in my eyes, I came to know what she sang. Often it was “Lead, Kindly Light,” but more often, to my torture now, it was that expression of absolute submission, “Just as I Am, Without One Plea.” And when her pale lips found the words, “O, Lamb of God, I Come,” I would bite my lips and hold my breath, that I might not break into the wild sobs that would have sore distressed her.

I had not liked the Rev. Hyler at any time, but when I learned that, minister as he was, the sole religious observance for the family was a hasty, almost angry, snatch at a blessing on the food, while for visitors there were family prayers both night and morning, my dislike became marked. Linda saw it as she saw everything, and unable to defend him, she suffered and was ashamed, but kept silent until that hot afternoon, when she said: “Little sister, you are not fond of papa, but try, dear—to put out of your mind—that matter of the prayers, and only think how old and tired and tried he is—and” (I heard his step approaching, and his dry, little cough)—“and listen to him kindly—and try to do what he asks of you—try, dear, for all our sakes.”

And then, to my bewilderment, the Rev. Hyler and his worn and helpless wife made solemn entry and seated themselves, and I, having risen respectfully, stood there and received the blood-curdling proposal that I should become the sister of the seven—the adopted daughter of the Rev. Hyler! Amazement kept me silent, and they went on to explain, with their eyes turned away from Linda’s face, “how bad it would be for the boys to be without a sister’s influence—and how they had been greatly gratified, though much surprised, to see that the younger boys had taken a strong liking to me,” and, glancing at their two grim faces, I wondered what they would say or do if they knew that their boys’ liking was founded upon a generous but downright falsehood, told by me to save the second youngest from a most unjust and cruel thrashing; after which I had gone at once to my mother, confessed the lie and accepted my punishment with a cheerful acquiescence that filled the seven with admiration and made them declare, with enthusiastic vulgarity, that I was “the biggest thing on ice!”

At last it dawned upon them that, for mere form’s sake, they should ask an answer from me, and it came in a swift and emphatic “NO!” They were surprised and angry, but to all their half-sneering questions—as to why and wherefore—wide-eyed and amazed, I had but one word for answer: “Mother!” The Rev. Hyler answered: “My wife will be your mother!”—and I almost laughed; then with large conclusiveness I replied: “But my mother loves me, sir!”

Miss Linda caught my hand and said: “Think, Carrie—a home—brothers—father and mother to love you.”

I looked at him a walking bitterness, I looked at her a withering disappointment and said: “No! no, dear Miss Linda, they love you, but they would not love me—and” I triumphantly added, “they will not tell you so!”

She turned questioningly to them, but the challenge was not accepted. Angrily her father bade me go, saying, “I might know what hunger was some day.”

But I answered cheerfully: “Oh, I have been hungry sometimes, and so has mother, but we were together, so it was all right. You know when you’re orphans and widows, you always come all right”—a speech that was as perfect in faith as it was imperfect in grammar.

The Rev. Hyler, with a vindictive gleam in his eye, “hoped I might be hungry again, that I might appreciate what I was rejecting”—and Miss Linda kissed me with a disappointed face, and whispered for me to go, now.

After that life became intolerable there, and soon there came a morning when, ready for an early start, I crept into Miss Linda’s room and knelt down by her bed, and with hands tight-clasped we looked—and looked—and looked, and spoke not one word between us. Then there came a call for me, and I rose to go. As I bent over to kiss her, she lifted a thin, little, warning hand and tried to turn my face away, but with a smothered cry of indignation, I caught her hand and held it while I slipped my other arm beneath her incredibly frail shoulders, and lifting her, I kissed her shadowy hair, her brow, her cheeks and her pale, dry lips. Then with a long, long look into her dark, sapphire-blue eyes, I laid her down and went out, and saw her no more forever. As I closed the door gently behind me, I heard, for the last time, the husky whisper that had grown so dear to me, and all it said was, “Little sister!”

I stumbled down the stairs, and slipping my hand into my mother’s, we faced the world once more, I having faith to believe that somewhere in its mighty length and breadth there was a home for us, and that together we should somehow find it.

For two years the gentle, little silent singer had been lying in her lonely and neglected grave, when I paid my only visit to the Hyler family. Circumstances had brought me into the neighborhood, and I felt in duty bound to “pay my respects,” as they called it. Poor Alfred’s fear seemed to have been justified, for the neighbors declared that since Linda’s death the boys had become a “hard lot,” and seemed actually to be growing more boldly bad week by week.

The Rev. Hyler and his wife at first seemed to derive a sort of sour satisfaction from my visit to them. The boys received me with noisy greetings and many poundings on the shoulders, and young savages that they were, they expressed their hospitality by the making of gifts, such as horse-hair rings, matched jack-stones, and several chunks of not-too-clean flag-root, both the smell and taste of which were particularly offensive to me.

Before tea was over all the kindness had gone out of Mrs. Hyler’s face, and it began to wear the look I had known well in former days, of dull, sullen dissatisfaction. Suddenly, apropos of nothing, she said: “I suppose, Carrie, you have heard all about Linda?”

With some hesitation I answered: “Yes, I think so. I heard that she—she went away in her sleep, and that you held her hand—but never knew when—”

“Oh yes,” she broke in, angrily, “and they told you, too, that I had sat there asleep, or I would have known—I know their tales.”

“Oh dear, Mrs. Hyler,” I cried, “indeed no one ever implied such a cruel thing! They only said she passed so gently that no one could have known the actual moment.”

She seemed somewhat mollified by this assurance, and went on more rapidly, and as she spoke she slowly turned her cup round and round in its saucer: “Linda had been so much better that last day that it seemed almost foolish when she expressed her wish to see each one of the boys alone for a few minutes. I told her so, but she only smiled and said, ‘so much the better for the boys.’ The memory of her last words to them should not be associated with suffering and pain, and so she had her way, and held each brother in her arms and whispered some last words—but smiling, smiling all the time.”

I clasped my hands tight beneath the table, and my heart seemed to beat out those cruel words, “smiling, smiling all the time,” and I whispered “Miss Linda, oh, dear Miss Linda!”

“Yes, and she had a little gift for each—and—well, later in the afternoon she was lying on the sofa, her eyes were closed, and beneath the cover her hand seemed to be moving all the time. Perhaps she was nervous, but she was saying, or repeating-to-herself-like, the words—”

I could not help it—from my lips sprang the line: “Just as I Am, Without One Plea!”

There followed a sort of general exclamation, and Mr. Hyler leaned forward, saying sharply: “How’s this? Who gave you your information—not the boys, I’m sure?”

Hot and confused, I said: “Nobody told me, I had only guessed,” (his disbelief was palpable) “because dear Miss Linda was so very fond of that hymn, and sang it nearly every day to herself.”

“And Mr. Hyler sneeringly assured me that, as Linda has lost her voice more than a year before her death, my statement had at least the element of surprise about it!” I sat mute—I could not explain to them about the silent singing.

Then Mrs. Hyler took up the hateful ball and sent it rolling toward me with the suggestion, “that as I was a good guesser, perhaps I had guessed all that she had been going to say?”

I steadied my voice and answered, respectfully, “that I had not guessed anything else,” and with mock surprise she said: “Indeed?” and then went on: “After a silence Linda spoke of you, Carrie.”

I looked up joyfully—my mortification all forgotten: “She said you were a remarkable girl” (even at that moment I was proud that she had not called me child, but “girl”). “I told her you were well enough, but in no way remarkable. She insisted, however, and then added, that if I ever saw you again I was to give you a remembrance. I thought the gift she chose very odd and unattractive, but she said” (how slowly she was speaking now) “she said you would understand it.”

She paused so long that I looked up. Her eyes were like a ferret’s, and Mr. Hyler, with his head in his hand, was watching me from between his fingers.

“Yes, ma’am,” I whispered, faintly, vaguely. Then she spoke loudly, roughly: “She told me to give you a handkerchief, and say to you, the longer you lived the better you would understand her gratitude, for your golden silence.”

I felt the blood fairly pushing through my veins—my downcast eyes noted that the very backs of my hands were turning red. Then Mrs. Hyler struck the table sharply and said: “Well, was she right—do you understand?”

I had no time to answer, for Mr. Hyler sprang up and, violently thrusting his chair against the wall, cried: “What folly to ask the question—of course she understands! Is not her knowledge burning red in her face?”

He stepped across the room and flung wide the door leading to his study, as he termed it—the boys called it “The Place of Horrors,” because they were always thrashed there with peculiar malevolence and ingenuity, and generally unjustly—they seldom got punished when they deserved it. There he waved me in. But grave and stern, Alfred’s voice came: “Father—father! Carrie is but a child—she is here alone, and she is a visitor!”

“Visitor or no visitor!” was the answer, “I will not permit this stranger, this mere nobody, to have knowledge of my daughter that is unknown to me!”

With wistful voice I meekly asked Mrs. Hyler: “Please ma’am, may I have the handkerchief?” and she sharply answered: “No—no! you shall have no handkerchief” (Alfred quickly left the room a moment) “until you have confessed every word that ever passed between you and Linda!”

Here Alfred came in again and, leaning over, placed in my hand the little gift, and kissing me, gently said: “There, Carrie, it was Linda’s own!” Then as he passed his mother, he laid his hand on her shoulder and said: “Dear mother, it was not yours to withhold—we must all honor sister’s wishes.”

Mr. Hyler fairly shouted: “Take your seat and be silent, sir! As for you,” (turning to me) “into that room! I will know what conduct my daughter was guilty of that she should be grateful for the shelter of your ‘golden silence’!”

The four eldest boys sprang furiously to their feet, but the cry that rang the wildest in that room, that might have been the cry of a woman-grown, came from my lips. I stood gasping a moment, and all I thought was: “Miss Linda, oh my Miss Linda—he insulted you—he—he, whom you always spared!” And then I began to grow cold—bodily, mentally! My shamefacedness, my fear, all fell away from me. I must have gone very white, for No. 5, a rather timid, gentle boy, said lowly: “Oh, mother, will Carrie faint? She won’t die too, will she?”

I lifted my eyes to the Rev. Hyler, and I felt a great contempt for him; while down deep in my heart there was growing a bitter anger that merged, at last, into a vindictive longing to see him suffer. I threw up my head and marched into “The Place of Horrors,” and turning, waited for him to follow me. He paused and looked at me with the same gleam in his eyes that shone there the day he wished “I might know hunger again.” Then, with petty triumph, he exclaimed: “When you leave this room I shall understand this thing!”

But he was only partially right, for when I left that room he understood several things. He banged the door shut, and then seated himself at his writing table, leaving me to stand at his opposite side, as a culprit stands before a judge. I looked at him and saw all the narrow, gray man’s meanness, his eager curiosity that was like that of a scandal-monger’s. Yet, I gave him one chance, for when he demanded: “Well, now, Miss?” I said: “Mr. Hyler, you must know, there is nothing wrong about dear Miss Linda’s kind message to me—she simply—” “Stop, where you are!” he cried. “I’ll have no prevarication! Where there is secrecy there is shame! No one ever conceals what is right! I’ll have the truth, now, and the meaning of this message!”

And I answered: “Yes, sir, you shall have the truth!” and I told him briefly of Miss Linda’s silent singing, and of her undying sorrow for her lost lover. As I spoke, utter amazement grew upon his face—he stammered out: “Why—why—what are you saying? She never spoke of him! Why—nearly three years had passed—since—since—the—r—the break—and ’er—you don’t know what you are talking about—she did not grieve!”

“Oh, yes, she did!” I tranquilly replied. “That was why she would never have a light in her room at night for fear the picture might be seen. She slept with it beneath her cheek, and washed it with her tears, and dried it with her kisses. Oh, yes, she grieved!”

His eyes began to look sunken and his face was working convulsively. Then I told him how I had found the picture and wrapped it in a handkerchief and had given it silently to her in his presence, and she had been grateful, not because she was ashamed of her love or her sorrow, but because she wished to spare him suffering. And with his clenched fist he struck the table, blow after blow, crying furiously: “You lie—you baggage—you lie!” Then suddenly turning his trembling hands palms upward, he pleaded: “Carrie—tell me that you lie!” But coldly I answered: “I do not lie at all, sir—and you know I do not—besides, here are dear Miss Linda’s very own words: ‘Every day of my life I lose my love—and every day the pain is fresh and new!’”

His eyes roamed from side to side—little bubbles formed in the corners of his lips, his hand went up to his throat and tried to loosen his collar, and I could just hear the whispered words that left his lips: “Linda—Linda—Linda!” and then, I struck my last blow at him. (Oh, Miss Linda, to-day, I ask your pardon, but then I was hard and pitiless, as only the very young can be.) And I went coldly on: “She said to me, she did not wish you to know of her sorrow, because, perhaps”—I leaned on the table and brought myself nearer to him—“perhaps you might feel remorse!”

He threw one hand above his head and gave a cry: “Perhaps? perhaps? only perhaps?” and suddenly fell forward on the table, with outspread arms, and I heard him call upon the God he had never truly served and ask the mercy he had denied his own child! And, as I left the room by a second door opening into the entry where hung my hat and cloak, the vindictive devil that possessed me made me say quite clearly: “As a father pitieth his own children!”

I was tying on my hat when I distinctly heard the boys quarreling as to whether or no there would be prayers held in my honor—some saying, “yes, because I was company,” and the younger ones arguing that, as I was not a “grown-up,” “there’d be no family prayers,” then suddenly there was a howl, and I knew they were coming to blows.

I slipped from the house, without good-bye to any one, and as I passed the study window, I glanced in and saw the “gray head” bowed upon the table and two hands beating feebly, aimlessly, and suddenly I seemed to hear Miss Linda’s husky whisper saying: “And only remember how old and tired and tried he is, dear!”

And I cried aloud: “Forgive me, forgive me, dear Miss Linda—I did it because I loved you so!” and looking across the years—I say now—I love you so, dear Little Silent Singer.