A Poor Wise Man

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XLI

  In her bed in the maternity ward Edith at first lay through the days,watching the other women with their babies, and wondering over thestrange instinct that made them hover, like queer mis-shaped ministeringangels, over the tiny quivering bundles. Some of them were like herself,or herself as she might have been, bearing their children out ofwedlock. Yet they faced their indefinite futures impassively, contentin relief from pain, in the child in their arms, in present peace andsecurity. She could not understand.

  She herself felt no sense of loss. Having never held her child in herarms she did not feel them empty.

  She had not been told of her mother's death; men were not admitted tothe ward, but early on that first morning, when she lay there, hardlyconscious but in an ecstasy of relief from pain, Ellen had come. A tiredEllen with circles around her eyes, and a bag of oranges in her arms.

  "How do you feel?" she had asked, sitting down self-consciously besidethe bed. The ward had its eyes on her.

  "I'm weak, but I'm all right. Last night was awful, Ellen."

  She had roused herself with an effort. Ellen reminded her of something,something that had to do with Willy Cameron. Then she remembered, andtried to raise herself in the bed.

  "Willy!" she gasped. "Did he come home? Is he all right?"

  "He's all right. It was him that found you were here. You lie back now;the nurse is looking."

  Edith lay down and closed her eyes, and the ecstasy of relief and peacegave to her pale face an almost spiritual look. Ellen saw it, and pattedher arm with a roughened hand.

  "You poor thing!" she said. "I've been as mean to you as I knew how tobe. I'm going to be different, Edith. I'm just a cross old maid, and Iguess I didn't understand."

  "You've been all right," Edith said.

  Ellen kissed her when she went away.

  So for three days Edith lay and rested. She felt that God had been verygood to her, and she began to think of God as having given her anotherchance. This time He had let her off, but He had given her a warning.He had said, in effect, that if she lived straight and thought straightfrom now on He would forget this thing she had done. But if she didnot--

  Then what about Willy Cameron? Did He mean her to hold him to that now?Willy did not love her. Perhaps he would grow to love her, but she wasseeing things more clearly than she had before, and one of the thingsshe saw was that Willy Cameron was a one-woman man, and that she was notthe woman.

  "But I love him so," she would cry to herself.

  The ward moved in its orderly routine around her. The babies werecarried out, bathed and brought back, their nuzzling mouths open forthe waiting mother-breast. The nurses moved about, efficient, kindly,whimsically maternal. Women went out when their hour came, swollenof feature and figure, and were wheeled back later on, etherealized,purified as by fire, and later on were given their babies. Their faceswere queer then, frightened and proud at first, and later watchful andtenderly brooding.

  For three days Edith's struggle went on. She had her strong hours andher weak ones. There were moments when, exhausted and yet exalted,she determined to give him up altogether, to live the fiction of themarriage until her mother's death, and then to give up the house andnever see him again. If she gave him up she must never see him again. Atthose times she prayed not to love him any longer, and sometimes, for alittle while after that, she would have peace. It was almost as thoughshe did not love him.

  But there were the other times, when she lay there and pictured themmarried, and dreamed a dream of bringing him to her feet. He had offereda marriage that was not a marriage, but he was a man, and human. He didnot want her now, but in the end he would want her; young as she was sheknew already the strength of a woman's physical hold on a man.

  Late on the afternoon of the third day Ellen came again, a swollen-eyedEllen, dressed in black with black cotton gloves, and a black veilaround her hat. Ellen wore her mourning with the dogged sense of dutyof her class, and would as soon have gone to the burying ground in herkitchen apron as without black. She stood in the doorway of the ward,hesitating, and Edith saw her and knew.

  Her first thought was not of her mother at all. She saw only that theGod who had saved her had made her decision for her, and that now shewould never marry Willy Cameron. All this time He had let her dream andstruggle. She felt very bitter.

  Ellen came and sat down beside her.

  "She's gone. Edith," she said; "we didn't tell you before, but you haveto know sometime. We buried her this afternoon."

  Suddenly Edith forgot Willy Cameron, and God, and Dan, and the yearsahead. She was a little girl again, and her mother was saying:

  "Brush your teeth and say your prayers, Edie. And tomorrow's Saturday.So you don't need to get up until you're good and ready."

  She lay there. She saw her mother growing older and more frail, thehouse more untidy, and her mother's bright spirit fading to the drab ofher surroundings. She saw herself, slipping in late at night, listeningalways for that uneasy querulous voice. And then she saw those recentmonths, when her mother had bloomed with happiness; she saw herstruggling with her beloved desserts, cheerfully unconscious of anyfailure in them; she saw her, living like a lady, as she had said, withevery anxiety kept from her. There had been times when her thin face hadbeen almost illuminated with her new content and satisfaction.

  Suddenly grief and remorse overwhelmed her.

  "Mother!" she said, huskily. And lay there, crying quietly, with Ellenholding her hand. All that was hard and rebellious in Edith Boyd wasswept away in that rush of grief, and in its place there came a newcourage and resolution. She would meet the future alone, meet it andovercome it. But not alone, either; there was always--

  It was a Sunday afternoon, and the nurse had picked up the worn wardBible and was reading from it, aloud. In their rocking chairs in asemi-circle around her were the women, some with sleeping babies intheir arms, others with tense, expectant faces.

  "Let not your heart be troubled," read the nurse, in a grave youngvoice. "Ye believe in God. Believe also in Me. In my Father's house--"

  There was always God.

  Edith Boyd saw her mother in the Father's house, pottering about somesmall celestial duty, and eagerly seeking and receiving approval. Shesaw her, in some celestial rocking chair, her tired hands folded, slowlyrocking and resting. And perhaps, as she sat there, she held Edith'schild on her knee, like the mothers in the group around the nurse. Heldit and understood at last.