The House on the Hill [pp. 64-72]

The House on the Hill.
shawl, knit by the girl's own fingers, in
Heaventknows what hours added to her
day's hard toil or robbed from her rest.
It was a gift consecrated as only love
and self-forgetfulness can consecrate. It
fell upon my mistress like an electric
shock, piercing her frozen heart, breaking down the barriers of her reserve,
unsealing the flood-gates of her eyes.
"Oh,'Margie, Margie," she sobbed.
"I've been a wicked, selfish woman all
my life. Allimy life. I know it now. I
own.it now, when it's too late. Both,both
gone! My husband and my son. Both
driven away bylme; one to death, the
other to ruin. Don't turn away from me.
Don't be hard on me, dear. I might have
kept Ned here; I should have, but for you.
And now - now! I could not, if I
hunted the world over, find one who
would be half so dear a daughter. Don't
be hard on me, Margie."
Hard upon her? The girl was crying
softly over her, stroking herhead gently,
wrapping the white shawl closer about
the thin shoulders, promising that whatever came their lives should be united
henceforth, even if they went down to
desolate old age together.
I was [having my own experiences
about this time.
Up the street there came the footfall
of a tramp, a halting, dejected, tarrying,
irresolute step, that no doorbell of experience could ever mistake, that tells of a
long and desultory journey on foot, of
clothing ragged and soiled, of irregular
and insufficient meals, of lost courage
and crushed hope.
I do not approve of tramps by day,
much less by night, but this one slouched
through our gate and stole up the steps,
and laid a timid, nerveless hand upon
me, so that I tinkled a faint response;
and the moment he touched me I knew
him for my young master, penniless, discouraged, robbed and cheated of his due,
returning shamefaced to his home.
Both women came into the hall together to answer my call, and when the
doorwas opened and the wanderer looked
in, his eyes fell first upon Margie. Something long repressed flashed up like a
living flame in both their faces. It was
her, and not his mother, whom he took
into his arms.
If my mistress felt the difference, she
did not betray it by word or sign. For
the first time in her life, where her own
interests were concerned, she did not
attempt to rule destiny, but let it work
its will. She did more. She aided
and abetted it. She encouraged the two
young people to join their lives in the
midst of the holiday season, and before
the old year waned. She made a last
call upon their almost exhausted resources, and by some neat stroke of
woman's financiering, the sale of some
cherished jewelry, I believe, realized her
feverish anxiety to see the young people
settled in life, and sent them off on a
modest wedding trip a short distance
into the country.
She bade them good-by with a cheerful smile, but they remembered, long
afterwards, the solemn tenderness of her
face, like that of one who bids a long
farewell.
It was the last day of the old year.
She locked and bolted the door and went
upstairs to her own room, opening a
chest and kneeling on the floor before it.
One by one she took out the things it
contained. A box that held her wedding dress, now yellowing with age, but
about which there still seemed to linger
the scent of orange blossoms, sickening,
overpowering in their dead sweetness.
A pair of white slippers in which she had
danced, a bride. A little ivory case in
which two faces, her own gay and blooming, his strong and tender, seemed to
gaze with happy confidence at each other. Little garments; a curl cut from
the head of a baby daughter as she lay
in her coffin.
Last of all, a great brown-paper package, which seemed to exude a suggestion
of mold and decay.
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70
[Jan.