CAUF. UBRAMY. LOS ANGELES* The Lady In Gray 3s, CLARA E. LAUGHLIN THE EVOLUTION OF A GIRL'S IDEAL. 16mo. Decorated. .50 net. DIVIDED: A story based upon Jean Ingelow's poem of the same name. 12 mo. Decorated. .75 net. WHEN JOY BEGINS: A little story of the Woman-heart. 12mo. .50 net. MILADI: Sundry chapters of Miladi's daydreams. 12mo. $1.20 net The Lady in Gray A story of the steps by which we climb BY Clara E. Laughlin 'Life and Suffering are Power" NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO Fleming H. Revell Company LONDON AND EDINBURGH 1908 Copyright, 1908, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. London: 21 Paternoster Square Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street FRANCES STARR 21,30993 " The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead young mothers, returned to see how their children fare. There is no other inducement great enough to bring the departed back." JAMES M. BARRIE, In The Little White Bird." THE LADY IN GRAY I THE homely room was full of after- noon sunshine. On the west and south windows the icicles dripped with a measured regularity hardly outdone by the ticking of the old clock with the Swiss mountain scene painted on its face below the dial. There was a gray, sluggish look to the fire in the self-feeder, but its cheer was not needed, for the big bay window was banked with potted geraniums rising tier above tier in their wire stand, so that the sunlight, filtering through, lay in latticed stripes and patches on the floor. The carpet was a faded Brussels which had once been many-hued, but was far more forgivable in its latter state than its first. Faded, too, was the old sofa, which sagged in the middle where tired bodies had laid the 7 THE LADY heaviest tax on its comfort. The sofa had played an important part in the drama of family life in this home ; it had held two little babies on their earliest journeys from the bed- room adjoining, where they had come into the world; it had held those same babies afterwards, in times of misery, their little heads wound 'round with hot flannel, and in times of ecstasy, curled up with Grimm's fairy tales or Robinson Crusoe. Once there had been carried to it, from that near-by bed- room, a young woman with a flush in her thin cheeks, and when she was lifted thence again the flush was gone, and she had turned awesomely waxy ; and that night a man lay on the sofa the long hours through until the gray dawn, shaking with sobs. To-day, a little girl played beside the faded sofa on the faded Brussels floor. The room which had once been eloquent of loving care, now showed the difference between home- 8 THE LADY IN GRAY making as a delight and home-making as a duty. When that young thing went waxy- white so suddenly, there had come, not to take her place but to keep her house, a stout, sturdy, serene person of distant cousinship, who met every requirement with apparently greater skill than the young thing had ever dreamed of. Only a sensitive spirit, perhaps, would have noted the difference ; certainly the stout woman didn't ; as for the children, they could remember no other than the stout relative's ways. And if the man who had sobbed that long, black night through, felt any difference, he never said so. In the kitchen the stout relative was mak- ing apple sauce, stepping about heavily from sink to stove, with an occasional word to the cat to get out of her way. In the sitting-room, the child, with a small china doll and a large rag doll, played " come to see." " Now," she murmured to her family, " we'll 9 E LADY IN GRAY all dress up in our very best dresses and go to visit the gray lady." The china doll, by reason of her undemand- * ing size, was the only one of the trio who had a " really " best dress ; it was a silvery gray silk which the child knew had belonged to that mythical person, her mother. She thought her mother must have been a very splendid creature, for the scrap of silk was far more beautiful than anything in the way of wearing apparel the child had ever seen. Indeed, it was the only bit of beauty in her piece -box, full of the snippings and leavings of wholly utilitarian dressers. Out of a waste of black cashmere and brown henrietta-cloth and drab brilliantine, the child had only this little scrap of suggestion whereby to lay hold on a lovelier order of things, and all the Beings Beauteous of her world of dreams wore gray silk, shimmering, silvery gray silk, and none other apparel at any time. Arrayed in her precious gown of gray, the 10 THE LADY I N GRAY china doll was set on the sofa to " keep clean and not muss yourself " a formula familiar to the child and the labour of apparelling the rag doll in silvery silk of the imagination was speedily accomplished ; a quaint little black-and-white checked shawl belonging to the child was pinned by one corner to the doll's back, for a train, and her costume was complete. The child's own 'tiring took longer, as she really pretended to don and button and tie and adjust a very elaborate toilet which was " all gray silk, even to my bunnit," she told the dolls ; although to the unseeing eye there was no " bunnit " nor any evidence of festal array beyond one of the stout relative's white aprons, edged with crochet lace, tied in front about the child's waist. If the child had lived in these days, perhaps her elders, enlightened by William Canton and other sages of the child-heart, might have accepted the " gray lady " as a matter of course, the " invisible playmate " all im- ii THE LADY I N GRAY aginative children have. But these things happened thirty years ago, when people had small respect for the visions of the childish mind. However, visions that two can see are little like to be worth having, and the child felt no loneliness in her sense of the gray lady. The journey to the gray lady's house was made by way of the stove, the stand of plants, and the patent rocker, back to the sofa again, where a grave little group stood awaiting entrance to a grand house, "twict as big " as the biggest house in the village, she explained to her eager children. " Oh, for goodness sakes ! " said a small, affected voice, speaking for the gray lady at sight of the company (it was what the stout relative always said, and the child knew no other form of greeting), " Come right in and have some cake and lemonade ; I've just baked a raisin cake with the thi-ickest frostin' " (this was not quoted from the stout relative, 12 THE LADY IN GRAY If but represented the child's idea of what a really lovely lady would say, standing on the threshold of her castle of delight). I'm sure I do not need to tell you the en- chanting things the gray lady had in her castle, nor the delicious things she dispensed, nor the ecstasy it was to visit her and to have her " come to see " ; you may not have called her the gray lady (I used to call her Mrs. Rich), but you doubtless knew her, and her house, and all her delightful ways. Wher- ever, on a childish spirit, " the world's rough hand " had lain heavily, there the fairy god- mother, whatever we called her, laid the balm of her soft, cool fingers, and what we lacked - was suddenly supplied. When she ceased to soothe us we began to realize that we had left the dear child-heart far behind, and very wistful for her return we've often been. Ah, well! The three were making their ceremonious exit from the gray lady's house, the child 13 THE LADY IN GRAY holding the rag doll by one hand and carry- ing the china doll in the crook of the other arm, when the murmur of subdued conversa- tion attracted the stout relative's attention. " For the land's sake ! What's that child up to now ? " she muttered, drawing her pan of apple sauce back from the front of the range so it wouldn't burn while she went to look. The white apron and the checked shawl were being given a proud little flirt, to spread them to their amplest splendour, when she opened the kitchen door. " Who you talking to ? " she asked. " Nobody," said the little girl, guiltily con- scious of the clean white apron. " Where's your sister ? " demandingly. "Out playin'," with a jerk of her head towards the window. "Well, and why ain't you out playin' 's what I want to know? Huggin' the stove this beautiful, warm day, like it was twenty THE LADY IN GRAY below zero. An' my clean white apron a-draggin' 'round the floors 1 Gimme it this minute ! An' you put on your things an' go out an' play, an' don't come in till I tell you to." There was nothing unkindly in the com- mand that is, unkindly intentioned. It was a mild winter day and every other child in the village was out sledding or snowballing or playing games in the soft snow, and one solitary child indoors playing alone marked an inclination towards peculiarity not to be tolerated. The stout relative had an easy conviction that what " mos' folks " did was right, and she hated any departure from the way of the majority. That night, when the ruddy little "tom- boy" girl and the rather pale little quiet girl were tucked in bed, their prayers said and the stout relative's duty discharged for one more day, she told the children's father that she believed the younger child ought to be " looked after a little." 15 THE LADY I N GRAY " It don't seem natural to me for a child to be playin' 'round by herself all the time an' a-talkin' to folks that ain't there. I dunno ! It may be all right, but it don't seem so to me. 'Tain't like I was their own mother, you see; I don't feel 's if I'd ought to take the same responsibility." The man across from her looked worried. He was a quiet man, and the look of grim resignation which had settled about his mouth in the gray of that desolate morning years ago, had never left him. " I'm sure I don't know," he murmured. " I know you do all you can, all anybody can ; but there's no one but their mothers knows how to bring up little girls, I guess." 16 THE LADY IN GRAY II FIFTEEN years had passed since the winter day when the little girl played " come to see " her dear gray lady. They had been busy, happy years, and it was a long, long time since she had thought of the invisible playmate of her childhood. She had developed a gift of song, and all her day-dreams, now, were of the fame it was to bring her ; of the thrill of standing before great audiences and feeling her power over them ; of living in an atmosphere of perpetual adoration. She " played " the day was already come when these things were true. She planned the gorgeous gowns she'd wear, the flowers that would be handed up to her across blazing footlights, the murmurs of awe and wonder that would follow in her wake wherever she moved. 17 THE LADY IN GRAY Then, one day, the older girl the active, restless older girl, whose whole life had been one intense longing for adventure, for escape from the monotony of the home routine re- turned from the near-by city and announced her marriage. She had laid her hand eagerly in that of the first man who prom- ised her a change ; and packing into a small trunk all the belongings of the old life that she cared to carry into the new, she set forth, radiant with expectancy, to try to find hap- piness in the city of great shops and theaters and gay crowds and constant variety. In six years she was back ; lying,' day after day, on the old sofa in the sitting-room, and watching with childish interest the change of the sunspot on the carpet every afternoon at three, as winter wore on towards spring. In the spring she died, and two little children, a boy and a girl, stood by her open grave in the cemetery and gazed with awe-filled but uncomprehending eyes at the last act of 18 THE LADY IN GRAY a poor little tragedy which but for them would have lacked any element of poignancy. For herself, she was glad to slip away ; but for them, going would have had no anguish. " Be good to my poor babies," she pleaded with her last fluttering breath. It was the thousandth time she had made the plea, and then, as ever, her sister promised. Now she was gone ; the things she had worn were folded and put away, and down from the attic was brought a quaint little child's rocker blue, with red roses painted on it in which she had sat long ago. Out of exile came, too, the rag doll and the china doll, and the little black and white checked shawl with the ragged fringe. The old sitting-room looked very different, now, for all the years of weal and woe and humdrum daily routine that had passed over it. There was an open fireplace instead of the self-feeder, and the carpet had been renewed ; so, too, the sofa, which had had new interior 19 I N GRAY economy and new exterior apparel more than once, without sacrifice of its familiar appear- ance. For the rest, things were practically unaltered ; the bay window was still full of flowering plants on their green wire stand ; the old clock with the Swiss mountain scene had not faltered in faithfulness ; even the patent rocker was still in commission. Outwardly, things showed little change ; but in reality, the whole face of the universe was changed for the woman on whose minis- trations, now, this home depended. The stout relative had long since given up her cares here and gone to doze out a restful old age in the chimney-corner of a dutiful son. It was a slim, girlish form, now, that moved about the homely tasks a slim, girlish form whose shoulders bore the burden of her father's comfort and welfare, and of these little children's. The dreams of glory seemed as far behind this present as the visits to the gray lady ; for even had there been means to THE LADY IN GRAY make study possible, there was no way, now, to evade the responsibilities love laid on her. So things stood when the postman's knock brought her to the door one June morning about six weeks after her sister's death. There was a letter for her in a familiar hand- writing. With a happy smile on her face she carried it into the sitting-room and dropped upon the sofa, tearing open the envelope with an impatient finger. " Wonderful, wonderful news ! " the letter said. " I have two years' leave of absence and a scholarship fund, and I am to go to Germany to study. I leave here the day col- lege closes, and will be with you forty-eight hours thereafter." This was not all. There was something, not written so much as conveyed between the lines, that sent the blood rushing to her cheeks and temples and caused her to hide her conscious face in the pillows. He was coming for her, she knew, this man she 21 THE LADY IN GRAY loved and who loved her. He was coming to take her to Germany, to share with her this wonderful opportunity. To Germany, whither she had so longed to go ! And because she was young and not long used to her respon- sibilities, she forgot them for a moment while her blissful fancy galloped ahead to the lovers' meeting, to the voyage across the sea, to the schools of the music masters, and to triumph at the end of hard, happy work. Then she remembered ! He came, as he had said, and when she had opened the door for him and looked into his eyes, there was no need for him to say any- thing. All she hoped and all she dreaded was there, glowing with love and expectation. He was so radiant it was thrice hard to tell him, to see the eager light fade from his eyes, and pain, protest and reproach take its place. Yes, he knew about the children, cer- tainly ! He knew that her father was old and poor and sad. But think ! Think what this 22 THE LADY IN GRAY W opportunity meant. It was not love only, it was the open door to all those things she had so passionately desired and he had, these sev- eral years, so ardently longed to give her. " I have thought ! " she cried, " God knows how I have thought of all these things, and wished for them. But I can't it must not be I can't, I can't 1 " Was there no elderly relative who might come again to the rescue, as when her mother died? No, she told him sadly, there was none. Well, then, couldn't some one be hired to cook and clean and mend, some one who had no voice, no lover waiting for her ? Ah, yes! there were such, undoubtedly. But how could she leave those she loved to the mercy of an hireling? There was her promise to the dead. There was her duty towards her father, that man of many sorrows so patiently borne. " Therefore shall a man leave father and 23 I N GRAY mother and cleave unto his wife," he quoted. " Shall a woman do less ? Haven't women been leaving all on earth and cleaving unto men they loved, since time began, and has anybody thought harm of it ? " " Ah, you torture me ! " she begged, pite- ously. " Wait, wait ! let me think 1 " " To-morrow night, then," he whispered, " to-morrow night I'll come for my answer." And now he was here, talking easily to her father about public affairs while she put the children to bed. A red-shaded lamp hung low over a center table strewn with evidences of the family life : an evening paper loosely folded after a leisurely reading ; a recent magazine lying open, face down, awaiting the resumption of an interrupted story ; a basket of stockings to be mended ; a boy's cap ; and the china doll. When the children were abed she moved about " straightening up," with those little, loving touches with which women glorify 24 THE LADY home-making ; and as he watched her it came to him what he asked of her, what he pur- posed against this lonely man and these little children when he begged her to go away. But he was young, and youth is selfish. And he was in love, and love is selfish until it learns better. In a little while, as soon as he decently could, her father got up and left them. He knew, though no one had told him, what the situation was ; knew that the last tender comfort of his lonely old age hung in the bal- ance. But it never occurred to him to say a word in his own behalf, for love had worked its perfect miracle in him, and he was now, not by battle but by instinct, unselfish. "Well," said the young man, at length, when they two were alone together. He was watching her intently, his grave, delicate face resting on a long, thin, nervous-looking hand. (He, too, had fought hard for the things he counted worth while.) 25 THE LADY IN GRAY She was looking, not at him at all but into the dim corner of the room where the old sofa stood, and she seemed to be seeing things he could not see ; but there was a look on her face that made him uneasy, as a pris- oner who reads his doom in the faces of his judges before ever condemnation is pro- nounced. " Well ? " he repeated, with a little tremor in his voice, " have you had any new light on the subject since last evening ?" She avoided looking at him as she an- swered : " I have." " And it is ?" wistfully. " It is it isn't it's just as I told you last night," she said, in a low voice ; and about her mouth, naturally very sweet and rather childish in expression, there were lines strongly suggesting those that for years had marked the mouth of her father. "I thought," he began, haltingly, "I 26 THE LADY IN GRAY hoped I mean, I felt sure, somehow, that you would come to feel my right to be con- sidered." "You know I have considered you," she answered. " You know that my struggle has been not to consider you, but to keep from considering you and myself too much. I hope," she went on, and her voice broke and quavered, " that not many women have to come through such a struggle. I'm sure there can't be many of us wicked enough to deserve it." She leaned further forward as she spoke, and screened her eyes with her hand. In an instant he was beside her and would have gathered her in his arms, but she pushed him away gently. " No, oh, no ! Go away, please," she whis- pered, " you mustn't make it harder for me 1 You must help me to bear it ! " " That's what I want to do," he cried, hotly ; " I want to help you bear things, and you won't let me ! " 27 THE .LADY I N GRAY Something of the eternal patience of the woman in suffering looked at him out of her eyes, which she raised to his full of reproach, and he was ashamed of his impatience. " Forgive me, dear," he murmured, humbly, " but oh ! this means so much to me, I can't help pleading with you. Your sister threw her life away, but why should you feel that she threw yours, too ? What right had she," fiercely, "to indulge herself in selfishness which was to involve others so terribly ? " " Then what right," smiling wanly, " have I to indulge myself in selfishness which will involve these same ' others ' still more ter- ribly?" " Ah, you don't see ! You don't try to see!" " I see that my duty's here, dear keeping the old home for my poor father, mothering my dead sister's children, teaching the vil- lage youth its five-finger exercises to eke out I see there is no possible 28 THE happiness for me if I turn my back on these who have been given into my keeping. God knows I have longed for children of my own of our own but so, it seems, it was not to be." Something primal, passionate, with all the power that endlessly repeats the awesome miracle of the creation, swept through him at her words, but the look on her face re- strained his utterance, and it came to him, in a flash of recognition, that there are greater powers, even in Godhead, than the power to beget, and that the greatest of them is the power of sacrifice. She was not trusting herself to look at him, but in a moment she went on in a plaintively steady voice : " I am going to tell you something that I could never tell to any one else, not even to my father. Perhaps you'll laugh at me ; but, no ! I don't think you will. " When I was a little bit of a lonely girl I 29 HE LADY IN GRAY used to have an imaginary friend as all chil- dren do, I suppose, especially those who are left to themselves a good deal whom I called ' the gray lady,' because I was fond of gray and liked to think she wore it. She was a lovely lady, and whenever I wanted to ' pre- tend' the most comforting or delightful things, I always pretended they came from her. I remember that when I wouldn't eat something that was deemed good for little girls, and was sent from the table in disgrace, I used to go and lay my head on a fat old rag-bag in the closet of my room, and cry and cry, and wish I were dead and buried in a nice little white coffin, out by the side of my dear mother ; and that Cousin Julia would walk behind me in my coffin weeping wildly and wailing that she had ' never treated that poor lamb kind enough 1 ' That was a mild comfort, but not enough. And then the gray lady would come and say, ' Come to my house, darling, and I'll buy you a little cart 30 THE D Y I N GRAY with a pony, and we'll have ice-cream, all you can eat, for dinner every day.' I always went without lifting my tear-drenched face from the rag-bag, of course and was so happy in her society that I forgot all my woes. Oh, she was good to me was my gray lady ! " For years, though, I haven't thought of her ; but last night, after you had gone, I came back in here and crouched down beside this old sofa where I used to bring my child- ish aches and sorrows, and buried my head in it and fought the fiercest fight I ever want to come through in my life. I think if I knew life would hold another such hour, I could not muster courage to go on living. There seemed to be so much of right on both sides, and on both sides so much danger of doing wrong ! How could any poor, dis- traught woman know which path to take, even if she had the supreme courage to take the higher path at whatever cost ? And 3 1 THE LADY IN GRAY while I crouched here in agony, all at once there was my gray lady, as vivid before my inner vision as ever she had been, and when she said to me, 'You're in trouble,' I cried, for the first time in all my struggle. It was such a relief I cannot describe it to you, but it seemed like going back from being a tor- tured woman to being a child again, and feeling sorrow to be not a responsibility but an injustice. " And so I poured out all the story of my woe. And it was such a comfort to be plead- ing for myself, instead of always against my- self, as I had had to do. ' Other men and women jump into marriage without a look ahead or behind but with eyes only for each other,' I urged, ' why can't we ? Why do we have to stand and weigh and ponder and hesitate ? And how do we know that with all our weighing, the scales of our present knowledge are just ? How do we know that, though we are willing to sacrifice ourselves 32 THE LADY I N GRAY and all our hopes, we are not shutting the door in the face of our great destiny ? ' " And oh, dear, what do you think my gray lady did ? She said, ' I know. I came to help you.' And from the folds of her dress she drew a little pair of scales of shining gold. ' The scales of beautiful living/ she said, and held them up for me to see ; ' they weigh not as the balances of to-day, but as the balances of eternity. " ' Hold them in your hands/ she said, and I reached out my hand and took them. ' Now/ she went on, ' into one scale you shall put every reason you can think of why you should marry the man of your heart and live the life you crave. And into the other you shall put every reason you think should deter you. And the balances will tell you truly the weight of each.' " And I did. I put in all the reasons against, first, and then I tried oh, God knows, dear, how I tried to lay enough 33 gument in the other balance to make it the heavier. But I couldn't I couldn't 1 " She was silent for a moment while she struggled with her tears. Then she said : " It was a dream, I suppose, for I woke, cramped and stiff, long past midnight, and the pillow on the sofa was wet cold and wet with my crying. But there could never be any further argument for me ; I can never feel that the scales weighed other than true." She had begun with her face averted, as if afraid to look at him lest she see incredulity in his expression. But as her narrative pro- gressed she could not bear the suspense, and she finished with her gaze fastened intently on him. It was too much for him, and he put up a hand to cover his eyes. In the silence that followed her account of the weighing of the balances she waited, tensely, for him to speak ; but he didn't. Then she caught the gleam of something on his hand. " Oh, my dear ! " She was kneeling by 34 THE LADY I N GRAY him, now, and reaching up for his hand she kissed it where the tear lay. He was a man whose tears meant much. " Ah, no, no ! " she pleaded, " we mustn't take it that way. It isn't doom, it's sacrifice. It isn't fate, it's ' the better way.' When the balance with love in it trembled in air, and the balance with duty in it went down, down, the gray lady pointed to the light balance and asked me, * Do you know why it doesn't weigh more ? ' And to my look of question- ing she answered, ' Because love never weighs much that has not been much sacrificed for. If you refuse sacrifice, love can never weigh more for you than it weighs for those who, as you say, jump into self-gratification, looking neither back nor ahead.' I believe her, dear, don't you ? " He reached forward and drew her to him, and for a while he could not command him- self to say a word, but their closeness and the silence soothed, and presently he said : 35 THE LADY I N GRAY " Yes, I believe her. I have been so sure that there could be no real life without you, and that no life with you could be less than the best; but now I see how it might be otherwise it might be otherwise." "I am so glad," she said. But when he was gone she went back into the sitting- room, put out the lamp, and kneeling on the floor with her head on the chair where he had been sitting, gave herself up to such agony of renunciation as only a strong spirit can know. THE LADY I N GRAY III IT was a golden summer morning. On the lawn to the south of a little brown house we wot of, a boy was pushing a lawn-mower up and down in nicely-calcu- lated, even strips, like a good plowman making straight furrows. From the kitchen windows of his house came delicious, fruity odours, telling all the neighbourhood his mother was preserving. In the back yard of the little brown house a big German woman of magnificent physique was hanging out snow-white clothes and look- ing as if the effort of washing them had been no tax at all on her superb energy. An acute ear, listening, might have heard the low hum of happy, homely industry vibrat- ing through all life, least and greatest ; from the buzzing of bees among the tall honey- 37 THE LADY IN GRAY suckle stalks, to the murmur of conversation in a group of little girls rocking sedately on their diminutive chairs in the shelter of a vine-screened porch and sewing for their respective dolls. In ' the sitting-room of the little brown house an infinitesimal gray and white kitten sported ecstatically with a ball of crumpled paper tied to a piece of string and dangling from the back of a chair. The south and east windows were closed nearly to the bottom, but the west window of the bay, where the sun would not be for hours, was open wide, and the smell of the new-mown grass floated in deliciously. But for all the serene commonplaceness of every surrounding, an air of heaviness was in the room, an air which only they can ap- preciate who have felt the chill of personal apprehension in sharp contrast to the warmth and content of the world all around. On the sofa, lightly covered with a knitted 38 THE LADY IN GRAY afghan, lay a little girl who should have been one of the group on the porch with the trel- lised vine. Her eyes were bright, and she reached down a hand now and then to snap her ringers at the vivacious kitten. But there were marks of acute suffering on the deli- cately-featured face, and the hand that played with the kitten had lost all its childish plumpness and grown pitifully thin. It was hard to know whether she was the more or less pathetic because there was neither fear nor self-pity in her eyes. The door from the sitting-room into the hall was closed, and on the other side of it a little scene in the like of which we have all played, some time, our part was being en- acted. The doctor had left his patient, and the patient's most anxious relative had fol- lowed him to the door, tragically eager to know how much he had dissembled in the patient's presence, and how ill or good was the real truth. THE LADY I N GRAY " She seems a little brighter to-day don't you think ? " said the woman, hopefully. " Ye-es," answered the medical man, wish- ing to God he might say it more emphatic- ally. " You think don't you that is there seems to be every reason to hope she will pull through all right 1 " It was a horrible moment and had best be got through with quickly. If there were mercy anywhere it must be in the quick dis- patch of hope ; after which love could bring to its own aid whatever form of resignation was possible to it. " I think," he said, steadily, and trying to evade her searching look, " that the immedi- ate danger of death from meningitis is past, but that she will never walk again." He saw her face go ashen pale, saw her clutch a rail of the banister for support, but she neither " winced nor cried aloud." After a few moments in which both were distinctly 40 THE LADY I N GRAY v conscious of the whirr of the lawn-mower, and of naught besides, she said : " We might try consultation ? We is there nothing to be done ? " He shook his head. Of course she might try one may always try, and the effort is in itself a com- fort. It is something to feel that no stone has been left unturned but ! The habits of gentle breeding impelled her to thank him gravely, and to speak the formal good-day. Then the door closed behind him and she heard the grating of his carriage wheel against the stone horse-block. At first thought, the closing of the door meant re- lease from self-restraint, and she wondered, dully, where she should go to " have it out with " this new horror that had come upon her, and learn how to adjust her life to its endurance. But a sweet little voice called " Auntie ! " and whispering to herself, " not yet, not yet," she summoned all her strength of dissemblance and answered the call. 41 LADY IN GRAY " Auntie," said the child, " Mabel and Annie Louise and them are making dresses for their little dolls over on Mabel's porch ; I can hear 'em. Please can't I make my little doll a new dress ? Haven't you any nice new pieces you could give me ? " " Why, of course," with finely assumed gaiety, " that poor child of yours hasn't had a new dress in all these weeks her mamma's been sick. It's a perfect shame the way she's been neglected ! Now, let's see ; what kind of a dress would you like her to have? " " Pink ! Pink silk," said the child, eagerly, " an' one o' those ermine coats you make out o' canton flannel an' ink dabs ? " " Oh, perfectly beautiful ! I'll go this min- ute and look for some pieces." The lawn-mower continued to whirr up and down the straight swathes ; a grocer's boy, coming from the kitchen door by the path through the side yard, stopped at the bay window and called that he had left "the THE LADY I N G R A goods " in the washwoman's care, and after he had clattered noisily down the walk, Annie Louise's thin small voice could be heard from the neighbouring porch insisting, " Anyhow, mine's out of really dress silk, and yours is on'y out of a ribbon ! " " I guess they ain't any of 'em got an ermine cloak," said the child ; but her interest was beginning to wane, and before the dressmak- ing was finished, she said : " Let's do the rest to-morrow." " Shall Auntie read to you, Precious ? " " Yes'm ; read Little Silverhair and the three bears." But before the little bear had come home to find his chair sat in, the child was asleep. The woman moved about quietly, putting away the little doll and her new toggery, and the picture-book with the story of Silverhair. Then she went out to the kitchen and gave the young daughter of the German wash- woman, who was helping in this crisis, a few 43 THE LADY I N GRAY simple directions about lunch. This done, she came back to the side of her charge and sat down. It was her first opportunity to think over the doom pronounced by the doc- tor. At first her mind refused to grasp the reality of it ; a vague feeling of heartsickness sat heavily on her, but it was more like the recollection of a horrible nightmare than actual, poignant suffering. Gradually, however, it all came home to her ; and with tenfold bitterness, when she thought of the unsuspecting child sentenced to lifelong invalidism and ignorant of her sentence unable to comprehend it even if it were told her. With a mighty convulsion of agony the woman slipped from her chair and crouched beside the sofa, laying her head near the child's poor little useless feet. " I can't endure it, I can't, I can't," she murmured through clenched teeth. And then, on a sudden, she seemed to see the 44 THE LADY IN GRAY gray lady. Years ago the gray lady had looked very young indeed ; she appeared to have nothing to do save to look pretty and dispense delights. But now she looked dis- tinctly the woman who has lived and suf- fered. " Poor child," she said, and touched the woman's hair with loving fingers, "poor child." And again, as on that night not so very long ago, the tears of self-pity rushed to the woman's eyes. " I have to bear up before everybody else," she said apologetically, as she drew a hand across her streaming eyes. " I feel that if I give 'way, they all will. But you you seem all strength as well as all sympathy, and I want to throw myself on you as a wearied child throws itself on its mother." " That is what I came for, dear," said the gray lady. "When they told me she might die," 45 sobbed the woman, " I said I couldn't give her up." She was like a child confessing her fault. " I said it would kill me, but oh ! I didn't understand what life might come to mean for her. I thought only of myself she is so much to me ! It would have been so much better for her if she had died. Oh, do you suppose God left her, crippled, to punish me for my rebellion against giving her up ? I don't know why I did it ! I've had practice enough in giving up ; it ought to come easy to me by this time I" The gray lady smiled. " Have you never thought," she asked, " that when a thing has become easy to you, even if the thing be re- nunciation, it may be too little to require of you ? Renunciation isn't all of life, dear ; it's only the first lesson that poor, selfish youth must learn. After a while, renunciation be- comes easy ; then one must learn a harder lesson one must learn to endure." " I must be a very hardened sinner," sighed 46 THE LADY IN GRAY the woman, wearily ; " it seems to take such a lot of pounding to hammer me into shape." " When you went to school did you think you were a very stupid little girl because the teachers put you through so many classes ? " "Ah, but this is different and to what purpose ? " There was a bitter little fling to the question. " That I may not tell you, but at least I may tell you this : I come from where all things are plain and the Providence in every happening stands revealed ; but there is much I may not tell you, for not by knowledge but by faith must certain things be done. Once before I brought you the little gold scales and let you weigh your alternatives and choose, and you chose the better part. Re- nunciation, to be real, must be by choice, not by compulsion. This time it is not so ; en- durance, to serve its great ends, must be by compulsion, not by choice. You have no alternative, but this I can show you : In this 47 THE LADY IN GRAY left balance you may imagine all the pain, all the weariness, all the bitterness of this affliction, and that it weighs heavy I'll not attempt to deny. But see, dear for your strengthening 1 This other balance holds the weight of blessing this affliction shall be to you, and through you to many. See, dear only see I " The balance of pain went up, and the bal- ance of blessing down, 'way down, and the dear gray lady faded with her shining gold scales. When the little lad came in from his play he was frightened to find the group in the sitting-room so still, but the stir of his coming woke the child, who cried brightly : " Why, we both went to sleep I " " Yes," said the woman, jumping up, " it's a sleepy morning; even pussy went to sleep." And she pointed to the ball of gray and white curled up on the floor beneath its dangling plaything. 48 THE LADY IN GR IV THE neighbours, who knew exactly how many pupils she had and how many lessons a week each took, and how much she got per hour, said she could never have done it all on her modest earn- ings. They knew, too, the precise amount of life insurance left her by her father, and the figure, to a penny, of what was in the bank after his funeral expenses were paid. But however she had done it, the little brown house was painted white, with buff trimmings ; the old wooden fence was replaced by an aristocratic hedge ; and at the rear of the lot there was a dapper little barn housing a fat pony and a little wicker cart. The old sitting-room was almost unrecog- nizable. The sofa was covered with a bright drape, the dull drab wall-paper with the aim- 49 THE LADY IN GRAY less gilt scrolls which had done duty for so many years was replaced by a plain paper of rich deep crimson which set off to admirable advantage the many bright, charming pic- tures with which the walls were hung. In- stead of the patent rocker there was an enormous "Sleepy Hollow" chair uphol- stered in rich-toned tapestry. In a word, the room bespoke the love that had made the changes, and one needed little acuteness to guess, on entering it, that it was the dear, familiar place of some one whose comfort and happiness were life's best delight to some one else. There are rooms that breathe selfish- ness, and you cannot enter them without the oppressive feeling that their owner's first thought in life is of self. And there are rooms that breathe unselfishness like those mothers' rooms that are everybody's ref- uge and the minute you cross their thresh- olds you feel their beneficence. The old sitting-room in its new finery was eloquent 50 THE LADY IN GRAY of a great devotion ; and a pair of child's crutches told the story. The door into the bedroom adjoining was wide open, and a sweet, childish voice called out in comment now and then as the woman's voice read on " to show you I'm awake," the childish voice said. By the table under the drop light the woman sat in the Sleepy Hollow chair, read- ing from " Little Women." At length she said : " The next chapter is where Beth gets sick and Jo and Laurie make the snow man for her. Shall I read on, or are you sleepy?" No answer from the bedroom, but in the silence of strained listening, the sound of gentle, regular breathing. The woman laid by the book and tiptoed in to look at her charge and to draw the covers a little closer about her not that she needed them so, but that it did good to the heart that loved her to make even a pretense of service. 5' THE LADY IN GRAY Returned to her seat by the light, the woman unfolded an evening paper, a Satur- day evening special edition of a metropolitan journal of which she was fond. She looked "all of thirty," as the neigh- bours said, meaning, probably, that she looked a good deal more. But the neighbours reck- oned age by gray hairs, of which she had more than her due share, threading the thick dark locks above her ears and temples. What the neighbours could never quite understand was the look she wore in her face. The gray hairs they considered her entitled to, for they agreed that she had "seen a lot o' trouble," but there was that in her expres- sion which baffled them. Women with chil- dren of their own hearty, romping, rosy children shook their heads and said they couldn't wear that serenity in their faces if their little ones lay suffering and crippled in the house. " But 'tain't as if 'twas her own child," they said; "no woman can feel the 5 2 THE LADY IN GRAY same about another woman's child." Which went to show how little the neighbour women knew. With a sharp exclamation the woman drew the paper she was reading closer to her as if unable to believe her own eyes. There, at the top of a broad page, underneath glaring headlines, was a picture of the little low house, something purporting to be a picture of her, and a rude drawing of the child on crutches, waiting to be helped into her pony cart The headlines said : " The great literary secret of the year is out ! Charming books which have captivated two continents the work of a woman entirely unknown to literary world. Poor music- teacher in one of this city's suburbs said to be the author of ' ' and ' .' Desire to provide medical skill and luxuries for crippled niece led Miss to write, etc., etc. Story of the secret's discovery." When she laid down the paper the serene 53 look of the woman who had learned to re- nounce without being embittered and to en- dure without fret, was gone. There was something in this horror that neither sacrifice nor sorrow had prepared her to bear. But looking up, she saw her gray lady. As if the gray lady were responsible for this shameful thing, the woman thrust it at her. Maddened with the torture of it, she cried : " Is it for THIS I have suffered these long, lonely years ? Didn't I do every hard thing that was required of me, crying for no quar- ter when you told me they were for the best ? And is THIS what I must face, just when I had learned to find sweetness in my sorrow and blessedness in my lot?" "Ten years ago," said the gray lady, gently, " you craved fame ; you were almost willing to pay a more terrible price than this for it." " But this," retorted the woman, bitterly, " is not fame ! This is crucifixion." 54 THE LADY I N G R A " Most fame is," said the gray lady, quietly. " I didn't do it for fame," the woman pro- tested, " I did it for her. I wanted money for her ; I wanted doctors' skill, and a hun- dred comforts. I wanted the pony cart and easy chairs and pretty pictures and other things I could not buy. And like thousands of poor, tortured things, I tried writing- writing out of the fullness of my own heart. The things I wrote were too sacredly personal to acknowledge, but the publisher gave me his written bond that he would never disclose my identity. It was a great comfort to have the money, and to know that people loved the books that they reached other hearts even as they had come from mine. The dread that I would be taken from my darling and leave her unprovided for, seemed to lift and leave me free. And I was happy, really happy ; willing to believe that after all every- thing was for the best, and that my suffer 55 THE LADY IN GRAY ings had been sanctified to many, as you said they would be. But this, THIS 1 " " Oh, my dear," soothed the gray lady, " listen to me : I couldn't tell you, as I said, when I stood by you and watched you suffer, and knew what it was all for. But don't you see, now, how you have been led hither? How, when you thought you were denying yourself, you were setting your feet in the way of your heart's desire ? And how, when that doctor's verdict seemed to crush you, it was in reality but the weight of destiny im- pelling you towards accomplishment ? A life of great labour lies ahead of you, dear a life of great labour and responsibility, the respon- sibility of power. Like all other things .of great worth, it comes at a great price, a great price, of which this," touching the offending paper, " is but a very small part. But you wouldn't, at this stage in your brave, sweet life, refuse your duty because of pain would you?" 56 " It's too great weight for me," said the woman, wearily. " I am old in suffering, and I am tired. Years ago I would have had the courage to go on, but not now, not now 1 I could bear the pain, for I have learned how to bear pain ; but I cannot bear the responsi- bility. I have learned how to live my little, narrow life, but I have no preparation for the great, wide-reaching life, and it terrifies me. I am old see my gray hairs and I am tired ; I must be excused." " Dear, you cannot be excused," said the gray lady, firmly. " As for being old and tired, you are neither so old nor so tired as the majority of those to whom the responsi- bility of great action comes. And don't you see that it can't come to the young, the fresh, the eager, the untried ? That one must be well worn in suffering to be chosen for the discharge of great duties in a world of suffer- ing? And weariness is no discharge from duty. You may not refuse to obey because 57 THE LADY IN GRAY you have obeyed hitherto, and are tired. De- sertion is desertion, whether it be at the end of a hard campaign or at the beginning, and you may not desert, you must not, though the darts that assail you be poisoned and the aim of the archers deadly." " Oh ! " the woman cried out in her pain, " who are you that come always to spur me along a hard way ? " The gray lady's face seemed to tremble with emotion for a moment, but she made no reply ; only drew forth for a third time her shining scales. " For your cheer in a hard hour," she said, " I offer you again the balances of beautiful living. Your life, up to this point, has devel- oped in you a great strength, a great power along the very lines of strength of which most people stand in sore need. Now, you have no right to confine it all to your own need, or to the needs of your own hearth- stone. You have more than enough for these 5 8 THE LADY IN GRAY and you have no right to withhold it. Life and suffering are power. They, and this power to express, are the talents delivered to you for your stewardship. See 1 In this balance I put the weight of what life has brought you, and in this other balance you must put your contribution of cheer and suc- cour and inspiration to the world. It will needs weigh heavy, dear, will it not, if your scales are to balance ? " " I see ! You always make me see. For- give me, dear gray lady, that I could ever have questioned you," and smiling bravely through her tears, the woman caught a look on her gray lady's face that made the blur of the tears but a glass of understanding ; and reaching out her arms, she cried, "Mother!" But the gray lady was gone, and there was some one knocking at the door. Still transfigured by the beautiful knowl- edge that had just come to her, the woman 59 I N GRAY threw open the door, willing now to believe that all were angels of blessing who came into her life. On the threshold stood a man who asked her nothing, but folded her in his arms. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000110613 7