Husband and wife -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
"I will only ask you to remember and think of this, Mr. Wardwell. To a
man of just mind it is well worth thinking of always. My secretary,"
he went on, as he touched a button, "will prepare the papers. You can
then go to the city clerk and to your priest. If you should need help,"
he added to Augusta in parting, "in the matter of bringing your mother
home, I hope that you will command me."
The secretary, a young priest with the face of a big, solemn eyed boy,
came and conducted them to an outer office.
When they were again in the street, Wardwell faced Augusta and asked:
"Did you ever think of that, what the Cardinal said at the last?"
"No, I did not," she answered. "It wouldn't affect us at all, Jimmie?"
She had spoken so quickly and confidently that Wardwell thought that
she had not understood what the Cardinal had said. But the next moment
he knew that he was entirely mistaken. Augusta understood and accepted
everything with steady, unflinching eyes.
She said:
"I'd never wish to keep even a kitten that wanted to go away from me."
* * * * *
In the evening of the day that they were married, Rose Wilding came
home with them.
Augusta had managed to dress her into the outward semblance of her
old self. And in everything but the subject of Augusta she seemed
reasonable. That subject they did not press upon her. And when she
wondered why her little daughter had not come to bring her, they merely
said that Augusta would be waiting for her at home.
Augusta had made absolutely no changes in the house, trusting that the
presence in its own place of every remembered thing would awaken in
her mother the sense of security and home. And for a little time, as
she watched her mother walking slowly about her own room, touching a
curtain here, a pillow there, as had been always her busy way, the girl
felt sure that it was going to have just that effect.
But she observed that her mother soon became restless. She kept
glancing over her shoulder and sidewise at Augusta who sat in her own
little low chair which from childhood had been her favorite seat, just
below the big red post of her mother's bed. She was remembering now
how it used to be the greatest glory of her day to sit and watch with
adoring eyes the combing out of her mother great waves of wonderful
dark brown hair. It was snow white now, but still abundant and
strangely beautiful.
"Mamma," she said suddenly, "let me take your hair down and run it
through my fingers. Remember, you used to say it always took away a
headache."
Rose Wilding looked suspiciously over her shoulder. What was running
in the poor disordered mind it is hard to say. But when she turned she
spoke kindly and quietly.
"Don't you think it's time you were going back, child? Wont they be
missing you--there?"
Poor Augusta's heart turned sick with failure. She threw herself down
kneeling at her mother's feet, begging and crying:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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