第64章

XIX.

OCTOBER 1.

I Have had a charming summer with dear mother; and now I have the great joy, so long deferred, of having her in my own home.Ernest has been very cordial about it, and James has settled up all her worldly affairs, so that she has nothing to do now but to love us and let us love her.It is a pleasant picture to see her with my little darlings about her, telling the old sweet story she told me so often, and making God and Heaven and Christ such blissful realities.As Ilisten, I realize that it is to her I owe that early, deeply-seated longing to please the Lord Jesus, which I never remember as having a beginning, or an ending, though it did have its fluctuations.And it is another pleasant picture to see her sit in her own old chair, which Ernest was thoughtful enough to have brought for her, pondering cheerfully over her Bible and her Thomas a Kempis just as I have seen her do ever since I can remember.And there is still a third pleasant picture, only that it is a new one; it is as she sits at my right hand at the table, the living personification of the blessed gospel of good tidings, with father, opposite, the fading image of the law given by Moses.For father has come back; father and all his ailments, his pill-boxes, his fits of despair and his fits of dying.

But he is quiet and gentle, and even loving, and as he sits in his corner, his Bible on his knees, I see how much more he reads the New Testament than he used to do, and that the fourteenth chapter of St.

John almost opens to him of itself.

I must do Martha the justice to say that her absence, while it increases my domestic peace and happiness, increases my cares also.

What with the children, the housekeeping, the thought for mother's little comforts and the concern for father's, I am like a bit of chaff driven before the wind, and always in a hurry.There are so many stitches to be taken, so many things to pass through one's brain ! Mother says no mortal woman ought to undertake so much, but what can I do? While Ernest is straining every nerve to pay off those debts, I must do all the needlework, and we must get along with servants whose want of skill makes them willing to put up with low wages.Of course I cannot tell mother this, and I really believe she thinks I scrimp and pinch and overdo out of mere stinginess.

DECEMBER 30.-Ernest came to me to-day with our accounts for the last three months.He looked quite worried, for him, and asked me if there were any expenses we could cut down.

My heart jumped up into my mouth, and I said in an irritated way:

"I am killing myself with over-work now.Mother says so.I sew every night till twelve o'clock, and I feel all jaded out,""I did not mean that I wanted you to do anymore than you are doing now, dear," he said, kindly."I know you are all jaded out, and Ilook on this state of feverish activity with great anxiety.Are all these stitches absolutely necessary?""You men know nothing about such things," I said, while my conscience pricked me as I went on hurrying to finish the fifth tuck in one of Una's little dresses."Of course I want my children to look decent."Ernest sighed.

"I really don't know what to do," he said, in a hopeless way.

"Father's persisting in living with us is throwing a burden on you, that with all your other cares is quite too much for you.I see and feel it every day.Don't you think I had better explain this to him and let him go to Martha's?""No, indeed!" I said."He shall stay here if it kills me, poor old man!"Ernest began once more to look over the bills.

"I don't know how it is," he said, "but since Martha left us our expenses have increased a good deal."Now the truth is that when Aunty paid me most generously for teaching her children, I did not dare to offer my earnings to Ernest, lest he should be annoyed.So I had quietly used it for household expenses, and it had held out till about the time of Martha's marriage.

Ernest's injustice was just as painful, just as insufferable as if he had known this, and I now burst out with whatever my rasped, over-taxed nerves impelled me to say, like one possessed.

Ernest was annoyed and surprised.

"I thought we had done with these things," he said, and gathering up the papers he went off.

I rose and locked my door and threw myself down upon the floor in an agony of shame, anger, and physical exhaustion.I did not know how large a part of what seemed mere childish ill-temper was really the cry of exasperated nerves, that had been on too strained a tension, and silent too long, and Ernest did not know it either.How could he?

His profession kept him for hours every day in the open air; there were times when his work was done and he could take entire rest; and his health is absolutely perfect.But I did not make any excuse for myself at the moment.I was overwhelmed with the sense of my utter unfitness to be a wife and a mother.

Then I heard Ernest try to open the door; and finding it locked, he knocked, calling pleasantly:

"It is I, darling; let me in."

I opened it reluctantly enough.

"Come," he said, "put on your things and drive about with me on my rounds.I have no long visits to make, and while I am seeing my patients you will be getting the air, which you need.""I do not want to go," I said."I do not feel well enough.Besides, there's my work." "You can't see to sew with these red eyes," he declared."Come! I prescribe a drive, as your physician.""Oh, Ernest, how kind, how forgiving you are?", I cried, running into the arms he held out to me, "If you knew how ashamed, how sorry, Iam!"