By the Light of the Soul | Page 9

there in a rocking-chair. A lamp was burning over on the dresser, but it
was turned low; her mother's convulsed face seemed to waver in
unaccountable shadows. Maria sat, not speaking a word, but quivering
from head to foot, and her mother kept up her prayers and her verses
from Scripture. Maria herself began to pray in her heart. She said it
over and over to herself, in unutterable appeal and terror, "O Lord,
please make mother well, please make her well." She prayed on,
although the groaning wail never ceased.

Suddenly her mother turned and looked at her, and spoke quite
naturally. "Is that you?" she said.
"Yes, mother. I'm so sorry you are sick. Father has gone for the doctor."
"You haven't got on enough," said her mother, still in her natural voice.
"I've got on my wrapper."
"That isn't enough, getting up right out of bed so. Go and get my white
crocheted shawl out of the closet and put it over your shoulders."
Maria obeyed. While she was doing so her mother resumed her cries.
She said the first half of the twenty-third psalm, then she looked again
at Maria seating herself beside her, and said, in her own voice, wrested
as it were by love from the very depths of mortal agony. "Have you got
your stockings on?" said she.
"Yes, ma'am, and my slippers."
Her mother said no more to her. She resumed her attention to her own
misery with an odd, small gesture of despair. The cries never ceased.
Maria still prayed. It seemed to her that her father would never return
with the doctor. It seemed to her, in spite of her prayer, that all hope of
relief lay in the doctor, and not in the Lord. It seemed to her that the
doctor must help her mother. At last she heard wheels, and, in her joy,
she spoke in spite of her father's injunction. "There's the doctor now,"
said she. "I guess he's bringing father home with him."
Again her mother's eyes opened with a look of intelligence, again she
spoke in her natural voice. She looked towards the clothes which she
had worn during the day, on a chair. "Put my clothes in the closet," said
she, but her voice strained terribly on the last word.
Maria flew, and hung up her mother's clothes in the closet just before
her father and the doctor entered the room. As she did so, the tears
came for the first time. She had a ready imagination. She thought to
herself that her mother might never put on those clothes again. She

kissed the folds of her mother's dress passionately, and emerged from
the closet, the tears streaming down her face, all the muscles of which
were convulsed. The doctor, who was a young man, with a handsome,
rather hard face, glanced at her before even looking at the moaning
woman in the bed. He said something in a low tone to her father, who
immediately addressed her.
"Go right into your own room, and stay there until I tell you to come
out, Maria," said he, still in that angry voice, which seemed to have no
reason in it. It was the dumb anger of the race against Fate, which
included and overran individuals in its way, like Juggernaut.
At her father's voice, Maria gave a hysterical sob and fled. A sense of
injury tore her heart, as well as her anxiety. She flung herself face
downward on her bed and wept. After a while she turned over on her
back and looked at the room. Not one little thing in the whole
apartment but served to rack her very soul with the consideration of her
mother's love, which she was perhaps about to lose forever. The dainty
curtains at the windows, the scarf on the dresser, the chintz cover on a
chair--every one her mother had planned. She could not remember how
much her mother had scolded her, only how much she had loved her.
At the moment of death the memory of love reigns triumphant over all
else, but she still felt the dazed sense of injury that her father should
have spoken so to her. She could hear the low murmur of voices in her
mother's room across the hall. Suddenly the cries and moans ceased. A
great joy irradiated the child. She said to herself that her mother was
better, that the doctor had given her something to help her.
She got off the bed, wrapped her little pink garment around her, and
stole across the hall to her mother's room. The whole hall was filled
with a strange, sweet smell which made her faint, but along with the
faintness came such an increase of joy that it was almost ecstasy.