by Mark Twain
Daily, as the fair young idol of the house sank lower and lower, the sorrowful old aunts painted her glowing bloom and her fresh young beauty to the wan mother, and winced under the stabs her ecstasies of joy and gratitude gave them.
In the first days, while the child had strength to hold a pencil, she wrote fond little love-notes to her mother, in which she concealed her illness; and these the mother read and re-read through happy eyes wet with thankful tears, and kissed them over and over again, and treasured them as precious things under her pillow.
Then came a day when the strength was gone from the hand, and the mind wandered, and the tongue babbled pathetic incoherences. This was a sore dilemma for the poor aunts. There were no love-notes for the mother. They did not know what to do. Hester began a carefully studied and plausible explanation, but lost the track of it and grew confused; suspicion began to show in the mother’s face, then alarm. Hester saw it, recognized the imminence of the danger, and descended to the emergency, pulling herself resolutely together and plucking victory from the open jaws of defeat. In a placid and convincing voice she said:
“I thought it might distress you to know it, but Helen spent the night at the Sloanes’. There was a little party there, and although she did not want to go, and you so sick, we persuaded her, she being young and needing the innocent pastimes of youth, and we believing you would approve. Be sure she will write the moment she comes.”
“How good you are, and how dear and thoughtful for us both! Approve? Why, I thank you with all my heart. My poor little exile! Tell her I want her to have every pleasure she can—I would not rob her of one. Only let her keep her health, that is all I ask. Don’t let that suffer; I could not bear it. How thankful I am that she escaped this infection—and what a narrow risk she ran, Aunt Hester! Think of that lovely face all dulled and burnt with fever. I can’t bear the thought of it. Keep her health. Keep her bloom! I can see her now, the dainty creature—with the big blue earnest eyes; and sweet, oh, so sweet and gentle and winning! Is she as beautiful as ever, dear Aunt Hester?”
“Oh, more beautiful and bright and charming than ever she was before, if such a thing can be”—and Hester turned away and fumbled with the medicine bottles, to hide her shame and grief.
V
After a little, both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling work in Helen’s chamber. Patiently and earnestly, with their stiff old fingers, they were trying to forge the required note. They made failure after failure, but they improved little by little all the time. The pity of it all, the pathetic humor of it, there was none to see; they themselves were unconscious of it. Often their tears fell upon the notes and spoiled them; sometimes a single misformed word made a note risky which could have been ventured but for that; but at last Hannah produced one whose script was a good enough imitation of Helen’s to pass any but a suspicious eye, and bountifully enriched it with the petting phrases and loving nicknames that had been familiar on the child’s lips from her nursery days. She carried it to the mother, who took it with avidity, and kissed it, and fondled it, reading its precious words over and over again, and dwelling with deep contentment upon its closing paragraph:
“Mousie darling, if I could only see you, and kiss your eyes, and feel your arms about me! I am so glad my practising does not disturb you. Get well soon. Everybody is good to me, but I am so lonesome without you, dear mamma.”
“The poor child, I know just how she feels. She cannot be quite happy without me; and I—oh, I live in the light of her eyes! Tell her she must practise all she pleases; and, Aunt Hannah—tell her I can’t hear the piano this far, nor her dear voice when she sings: God knows I wish I could. No one knows how sweet that voice is to me; and to think—some day it will be silent! What are you crying for?”
“Only because—because—it was just a memory. When I came away she was singing ‘Loch Lomond.’ The pathos of it! It always moves me so when she sings that.”
“And me, too. How heart-breakingly beautiful it is when some youthful sorrow is brooding in her breast and she sings it for the mystic healing it brings. . . . . . Aunt Hannah?”
“Dear Margaret?”
“I am very ill. Sometimes it comes over me that I shall never hear that dear voice again.”
“Oh, don’t—don’t, Margaret! I can’t bear it!”
Margaret was moved and distressed, and said, gently:
“There—there—let me put my arms around you. Don’t cry. There—put your cheek to mine. Be comforted. I wish to live. I will live if I can. Ah, what could she do without me! . . . Does she often speak of me?—but I know she does.”
“Oh, all the time—all the time!”
“My sweet child! She wrote the note the moment she came home?”
“Yes—the first moment. She would not wait to take off her things.”
“I knew it. It is her dear, impulsive, affectionate way. I knew it without asking, but I wanted to hear you say it. The petted wife knows she is loved, but she makes her husband tell her so, every day, just for the joy of hearing it. . . . She used the pen this time. That is better; the pencil marks could rub out, and I should grieve for that. Did you suggest that she use the pen?”
“Y-no—she—it was her own idea.”
The mother looked her pleasure, and said:
“I was hoping you would say that. There was never such a dear and thoughtful child! . . . Aunt Hannah?”
“Dear Margaret?”
“Go and tell her I think of her all the time, and worship her. Why—you are crying again. Don’t be so worried about me, dear; I think there is nothing to fear, yet.”
The grieving messenger carried her message, and piously delivered it to unheeding ears. The girl babbled on unaware; looking up at her with wondering and startled eyes flaming with fever, eyes in which was no light of recognition—
“Are you—no, you are not my mother. I want her—oh, I want her! She was here a minute ago—I did not see her go. Will she come? will she come quickly? will she come now? . . . There are so many houses . . . and they oppress me so . . . and everything whirls and turns and whirls . . . oh, my head, my head!”—and so she wandered on and on, in her pain, flitting from one torturing fancy to another, and tossing her arms about in a weary and ceaseless persecution of unrest.
Poor old Hannah wetted the parched lips and softly stroked the hot brow, murmuring endearing and pitying words, and thanking the Father of all that the mother was happy and did not know.
VI
Daily the child sank lower and steadily lower toward the grave, and daily the sorrowing old watchers carried gilded tidings of her radiant health and loveliness to the happy mother, whose pilgrimage was also now nearing its end. And daily they forged loving and cheery notes in the child’s hand, and stood by with remorseful consciences and bleeding hearts, and wept to see the grateful mother devour them and adore them and treasure them away as things beyond price, because of their sweet source, and sacred because her child’s hand had touched them.
At last came that kindly friend who brings healing and peace to all. The lights were burning low. In the solemn hush which precedes the dawn vague figures flitted soundless along the dim hall and gathered silent and awed in Helen’s chamber, and grouped themselves about her bed, for a warning had gone forth, and they knew. The dying girl lay with closed lids, and unconscious, the drapery upon her breast faintly rising and falling as her wasting life ebbed away. At intervals a sigh or a muffled sob broke upon the stillness. The same haunting thought was in all minds there: the pity of this death, the going out into the great darkness, and the mother not here to help and hearten and bless.
Helen stirred; her hands began to grope wistfully about as if they sought something—she had been blind some hours. The end was come; all knew it. With a great sob Hester gathered her to her breast, crying, “Oh, my child, my darling!” A rapturous light broke in the dying girl’s face, for it was mercifully vouchsafed her to mistake those sheltering arms for another’s; and s
he went to her rest murmuring, “Oh, mamma, I am so happy—I so longed for you—now I can die.”
Two hours later Hester made her report. The mother asked,
“How is it with the child?”
“She is well.”
VII
A sheaf of white crêpe and black was hung upon the door of the house, and there it swayed and rustled in the wind and whispered its tidings. At noon the preparation of the dead was finished, and in the coffin lay the fair young form, beautiful, and in the sweet face a great peace. Two mourners sat by it, grieving and worshiping—Hannah and the black woman Tilly. Hester came, and she was trembling, for a great trouble was upon her spirit. She said,
“She asks for a note.”
Hannah’s face blanched. She had not thought of this; it had seemed that that pathetic service was ended. But she realized now that that could not be. For a little while the two women stood looking into each other’s face, with vacant eyes; then Hannah said,
“There is no way out of it—she must have it; she will suspect, else.”
“And she would find out.”
“Yes. It would break her heart.” She looked at the dead face, and her eyes filled. “I will write it,” she said.
Hester carried it. The closing line said:
“Darling Mousie, dear sweet mother, we shall soon be together again. Is not that good news? And it is true; they all say it is true.”
The mother mourned, saying:
“Poor child, how will she bear it when she knows? I shall never see her again in life. It is hard, so hard. She does not suspect? You guard her from that?”
“She thinks you will soon be well.”
“How good you are, and careful, dear Aunt Hester! None goes near her who could carry the infection?”
“It would be a crime.”
“But you see her?”
“With a distance between—yes.”
“That is so good. Others one could not trust; but you two guardian angels—steel is not so true as you. Others would be unfaithful; and many would deceive, and lie.”
Hester’s eyes fell, and her poor old lips trembled.
“Let me kiss you for her, Aunt Hester; and when I am gone, and the danger is past, place the kiss upon her dear lips some day, and say her mother sent it, and all her mother’s broken heart is in it.”
Within the hour Hester, raining tears upon the dead face, performed her pathetic mission.
VIII
Another day dawned, and grew, and spread its sunshine in the earth. Aunt Hannah brought comforting news to the failing mother, and a happy note, which said again, “We have but a little time to wait, darling mother, then we shall be together.”
The deep note of a bell came moaning down the wind.
“Aunt Hannah, it is tolling. Some poor soul is at rest. As I shall be soon. You will not let her forget me?”
“Oh, God knows she never will!”
“Do not you hear strange noises, Aunt Hannah? It sounds like the shuffling of many feet.”
“We hoped you would not hear it, dear. It is a little company gathering, for—for Helen’s sake, poor little prisoner. There will be music—and she loves it so. We thought you would not mind.”
“Mind? Oh, no, no—oh, give her everything her dear heart can desire. How good you two are to her, and how good to me. God bless you both, always!”
After a listening pause:
“How lovely! It is her organ. Is she playing it herself, do you think?” Faint and rich and inspiring the chords floated to her ears on the still air. “Yes, it is her touch, dear heart; I recognize it. They are singing. Why—it is a hymn! and the sacredest of all, the most touching, the most consoling. . . . It seems to open the gates of paradise to me. . . . If I could die now. . . .”
Faint and far the words rose out of the stillness—
Nearer, my God, to Thee, Nearer to Thee, E’en though it be a cross That raiseth me.
With the closing of the hymn another soul passed to its rest, and they that had been one in life were not sundered in death. The sisters, mourning and rejoicing, said,
“How blessed it was that she never knew.”
IX
At midnight they sat together, grieving, and the angel of the Lord appeared in the midst transfigured with a radiance not of earth; and speaking, said:
“For liars a place is appointed. There they burn in the fires of hell from everlasting unto everlasting. Repent!”
The bereaved fell upon their knees before him and clasped their hands and bowed their gray heads, adoring. But their tongues clung to the roof of their mouths, and they were dumb.
“Speak! that I may bear the message to the chancery of heaven and bring again the decree from which there is no appeal.”
Then they bowed their heads yet lower, and one said:
“Our sin is great, and we suffer shame; but only perfect and final repentance can make us whole; and we are poor creatures who have learned our human weakness, and we know that if we were in those hard straits again our hearts would fail again, and we should sin as before. The strong could prevail, and so be saved, but we are lost.”
They lifted their heads in supplication. The angel was gone. While they marveled and wept he came again; and bending low, he whispered the decree.
X
Was it heaven? Or hell?
Wednesday, June 6, 1906
The celebrations at York Harbor—Mrs. Clemens’s failing health—She entertains, for the last time, the beautiful “American foreigner” introduced by Carmen Sylva—The return to Riverdale in invalid’s car—The season of unveracity.
In York Harbor.
York Harbor consists of a widely scattered cluster of independent little villages called York, York Harbor, York Village, York Centre, West York, East York, South York—I think those are the names, but I am not certain, and it is not important. The whole of them together are bunched under one simple, rational name, York. About the 6th of August a celebration broke out among these hives—a celebration in commemoration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the institution of municipal self-constituted government on the continent of America. For two or three days there were quaint back-settlement processions, mass meetings, orations, and so on, by day, and fireworks by night.
Mrs. Clemens was always young, and these things had a strong interest for her. She even took more interest in my speeches than I took in them myself. During three days she went about behind horses in the daytime, and by boat at night, seeing and hearing and enjoying all that was going on. She was over-exerting herself, overtaxing her strength, and she began to show it. With difficulty I persuaded her to forego the grand performances of the closing night, and we observed their firework effects from the piazza, across the intervening distance of two or three miles. But my interference had come too late. The overtaxing of her strength had already been over-sufficient.
The next afternoon was the last she ever spent in this life as a person personally and intimately connected with this world’s affairs. It was the last time she was to receive and entertain a visitor. This visit promised to be commonplace, and instantly and easily forgetable, but by grace of my native talent for making innocent and discomforting blunders, it wasn’t. The visitor was a lady. She had forwarded to us a letter of introduction and now she was come, upon our invitation, to spend the afternoon and dine with us. She was a beautiful creature. She said she was thirty years old and had been married fifteen years. Her manner, and her English, would have convicted her of being of foreign origin, and if any evidence were needed to clinch the conviction and justify the verdict, it was present in her alien and unpronounceable name, which no inexperienced Christian might try to pronounce and live. Yet she was not a foreigner at all. She was American born, of native American parents. Her tongue had never known any language but the American language until she married that unpronounceable foreigner, at fifteen, in Paris. Her English was quaint and pretty, graceful, and understandable, but it was not Engli
sh.
The letter of introduction which she had forwarded to me was one of those formidable great missives which are the specialty of royalty, and it was from the Queen of Rumania. It said that the bearer and her husband, who was a Rumanian nobleman, had resided at the Rumanian court for fifteen years, where the husband had held an important post under the Government. The letter spoke affectionately of the wife. It also said that she was a highly accomplished musician and competent to teach, and that she was returning to her own country in the hope of being able to earn a living there by teaching. Her Majesty thought that perhaps I could be useful in finding classes for this exiled friend of hers. Carmen Sylva’s letter was in English, a language of which she is a master, and the letter explained why these people, so comfortably nested in her court and in her affections for fifteen years, were suddenly become exiles, wanderers in the earth, friendless, forlorn, and driven to earn their bread by the sweat of their accomplishments. But just as we were going to find out what it was that had caused this disaster—if it was a disaster—just as my wife and I had reached the summit of eagerness to get at the kernel of that interesting secret, the Queen delivered that kernel in French. It was a single phrase—two or three words—but they made a combination which we had never encountered before and which we were not able to cipher out the meaning of. The Queen said in substance—I have forgotten the exact words—that the husband had been obliged to resign his post, or posts, and retire from the court on account of—then followed that fiendish French sentence. For a moment I was so exasperated that I wished I never had learned the French language—plainly a language likely to fail a person at the crucial moment.
At mid-afternoon Mrs. Clemens, the beautiful American foreigner, and I, sat grouped together and chatting on the piazza. I had in my hand the current North American Review, fresh, enticing, inviting, with the fragrance of the printer’s ink still breathing from its pages and making me long to open it and see what was in it. That court-bred creature had her eyes about her. She was accustomed to reading people’s concealed feelings and desires by help of treacherous exterior indications such as attitude, fidgets, and so on. She saw what was the matter with me, and she most winningly and beseechingly asked me to open the magazine and read aloud. I was most cordially grateful. I opened the magazine, and the first thing that attracted me was an article by an Austrian prince on Dueling in Court and Military circles on the Continent of Europe. It profoundly interested me, and I read along with vigor and emphasis. The Prince was hostile to the dueling system. He told of the measures which were being taken by generals and great nobles in Austria—particularly in Austria, I think—to abolish the system. In the course of his uncompromising indictment of the system he remarked upon the fact that no important official on the continent of Europe could decline a challenge, from any motive whatever, and not by that act cover himself and his family with shame and disgrace and be thenceforth spurned and ignored by the society in which they moved, and even by their friends.