Chapter XVIII The Journey Home
Time passed on, bringing with it many of the things I was striving for. To become a learned man, a scientist, was never my desire, and, most likely, would have been an impossibility had I desired it. What I wanted was to be able to understand, to acquire a fair amount of mental balance, and then, to be able to put the acquired knowledge to the best use.
With the changing of my life, a changing of aims had also come, and, as in the old life, I was striving for success in the new life. The best way to make an ambition possible is to make the ambition reasonable.
I was still groping and groping, but thank God, I was groping forward. From whatever darkness still enshrouded me I kept steadily emerging closer to the light. I felt this and it made me feel that my probation should be ended.
Success without thrift is not well possible. My material advancement had continued. I had again been promoted and had soared way above the lowly position of a “baggage-smasher.” My salary was more than ample for my needs, and my deposit in the savings bank had grown wondrously.
Capitalists are proverbially aggressive. I, being one of the order acted accordingly and began to force matters. Women like to be coaxed and urged, and I did my proper share of it, because I knew it would result as it did.
With the consent of the mother, the date of our wedding was set for February.
Again another glorious period began.
It was over two months until the fixed date on which we were to become man and wife, and we thought it necessary to inform ourselves concerning several practical details. As I had now almost succeeded in securing a mentor for life, we agreed to suspend our evening lecture tours, and spent most of our time in wandering from store to store.
The time for buying household goods had not yet come, but it seemed to delight Mamie Rose to gaze into the shop-windows. At times, we would even go so far as to enter a store and price the goods. It was then that my admiration for my little girl increased again.
I had long ago recognized that of common sense I had only a very small share, and it was a splendid object-lesson to see my Mamie Rose dealing with the tradesmen. Calm and collected, she would listen to the smooth talk, and then act according to her own judgment, which was always sound. I knew nothing then of the sagacity of women shoppers.
One night I attempted to show off a little of my business sagacity. I chose a bad subject to practice on—diamonds. I can still hear her words ring in my ears. How foolish it was of poor people to stint and starve themselves for the sake of imitating flashy people by wearing jewels bought at the expense of something more useful. Diamonds and jewels were often the means of making the ignorance of the wearers more conspicuous. A woman who wears jewels knows that she needs other attractions than those given to her by nature.
Right here I got the best of my Mamie Rose.
“That may be all true, but nevertheless, I am going to buy you a ring, girl o’ mine,” I said very seriously.
“No, you will not, because you know I do not want it, and it will only offend me to have you give me one.”
“What?” I retorted, playing my part with perfection. “Won’t you permit me to buy you a ring for that day in February?”
“Oh, that is different, and—why are you laughing, Owen Kildare?”
Oh, girl o’ mine, girl o’ mine, why had it to be!
The day was only weeks distant.
It was in January, and we were out on one of our nightly rambles in the shopping district. It was one of those mild winter evenings which make our climate so uneven. I was glad of it, because my Mamie Rose was a dainty, delicate little creature, and on cold evenings I was afraid that she might suffer from the weather.
We were looking at some furniture displayed in a window, when a shower fell. We were caught right squarely in it. I wanted her to seek refuge in a store, or at least, in a doorway, but we were only a short distance from her home, and she insisted on reaching it before the shower turned into a downpour.
I had a heavy overcoat over a stout suit of clothes. “Let me put, at least, my overcoat over your shoulders,” I insisted.
“No, you foolish boy, no,” she laughed in answer. “Why, we’re only a jump from home, and I am dressed warm enough to risk these few drops.”
For once my Mamie Rose was wrong and it was the “once” that counted.
My misgivings were many when I left her at her home, but she assured me that she was in no danger of feeling the effects of the dampness.
I called on the following evening.
She had been in bed all day.
Of course it was nothing. “Just a trifling cold,” that was all—but the beginning of the end had come.
She laughed at us for our fears.
“Why, I’ll be up and about the same as ever to-morrow.”
To-morrow! To-morrow multiplied into dread, fearsome weeks. Yes, for weeks she painfully lingered on her bed, and I marveled with awe at the heroic spirit of my little girl.
The weakness increased until she looked like a dainty statue hewn in alabaster.
It was only a trifle more than a week before the date set for our wedding. The physician stepped from her bed and beckoned me to follow him into the next room.
You know what he told me, and you know that I did not believe him.
“The end coming? Pshaw, what nonsense! Was there not a loving, a merciful God above us?”
I could not deny the evidence before me. She was getting worse every day, but I could not, would not, believe that, which even her mother had accepted with resignation.
And next week we were to be married!
Spells came, during which reason left her, but in all her conscious moments she spoke to me with the wisdom of another world, and gave me then her legacy of purest, Godliest love.
Then came the day!
The afternoon sun was low when she asked me to lift her to the window. It was a humble neighborhood, devoid of all picturesqueness. All we saw in the last sheen of the sun’s departing rays was a little girl on the opposite sidewalk, playing with a kitten. The picture was very simple, but my beloved one watched with smiling interest until her tired little head fell on my shoulder.
She was so light, one did hardly know anything was in his arms, and without disturbing her reposing position, I carried her back to her couch. Back in her bed, we clasped hands, as foolish lovers will do, and, still confident, still hoping, lulled by the quiet and her happy smile, I fell asleep.
Suddenly I was awakened.
Her hand was not in mine. Her mother, weeping, knelt beside the bed.
“Why——?”
I understood, and in that same moment the edifice reared by her with such infinite care shook to its very foundations.
In the twinkling of an eye I was my old self again. The brute, so long subdued and partly tamed, arose in me with fury.
I drove them from the room. No one, except me, had a right there. And then, alone with her, I reveled in my sorrow, or burst into wild rage.
There, on the dome above us, were all the glistening orbs, which she had taught me were radiant evidences of God.
What mockery!
I rushed to the casement, and bellowing in delirium, I shook my fist at moon and stars—and cursed the Mighty Presence.
Then came an interval.
For a time I was cool and realized.
Her soul had flown to the realms above.
Alone with her, I sat for minutes, hours, eternities, it seemed, and every lovely feature of my Mamie Rose became forever engraven upon my mind and heart. My right hand was resting on hers, my left was hanging motionless by my side. Something rubbed against it. It was Bill, and all he had been to me was forgotten. No one, not even he, had a right there.
Again the beast flared up, and for the first and last time my Bill felt the brutal force of my wrath. He returned defiantly from the corner where he had landed and spoke his valid claim:
“I have a right here, Kil. You loved her, so did I, and I can understand your sorrow.”
I let him stay, and through that bitter night man and dog kept their silent vigil beside the bier of her who had loved both.
Perhaps I was wrong to profane the quiet chamber by the presence of my Bill, but I know she would have sanctioned it—we three were square, honest comrades.
With the coming of the same sun whose going she and I had watched only a few hours ago, came saner, holier thoughts. A message seemed to float to me from her sacred lips.
I knelt and prayed, “Thy will be done.”
Spare me telling you where, how and when she was buried. What difference does it make to you how she went her last journey, never to return in the flesh? Whether we had her buried in mountains of her favorite flower or sent her away in the pine box of the pauper, is of no consequence to you. She was nothing to you, she was mine, all mine; in life or in death, on earth or in heaven.