The Hope Pioneer

WHEN MARY DIED.
I had not met my old schoolmate in three years. We had been good friends since we were boys, and though letters had told the principal events of our lives to each other, still letters, even at their best, leave much to be said when friends meet face to face. I had not heard from him directly in many months, but unexpectedly having business in his city my wife had enjoined upon me to learn every detail from him of the last days of his wife, who had been her schoolmate and confidante also, and to bring him and his baby back with me for a good long visit. After the first greetings he led me to his private office, telling the clerks we were not to be disturbed by any one, or on any business, and there we sat down facing each other for a long talk. We were both rather slow in coming to the point, but at last I said: "Tell me all about your troubles, Tom." "I don't know where to begin." "Begin with Mary's sickness. I am interested in it all." "When the baby came there was not a man in the world with whom I would have changed places. I had previously seemed to be weighted down with forebodings of evil, but I kept these carefully to myself, except to enjoin the physician to take no risks, and to charge the nurse to be very careful. Mary seemed to be at all times confident of a happy ending and of the dawn of a happy era for us both when a baby should be with us. When the baby was here, sound of body and starting off as if determined to live, and Mary apparently out of danger, I banished all my fears and went around the house and through my work as if I had wings. You have children; you know how a man feels?" I nodded assent. "I went home one night as happy as a man could feel." "How old was the baby?" "Five days. I walked home that evening thinking how happy I was, and pitying the men who had neither home nor wife or baby awaiting them. I ran up the stairs with light feet, but still lighter heart, and was met with a 'hush' from the nurse. 'What is the matter? Is she asleep?' " 'She has had a chill, and now has a very high fever. I sent for the doctor and expect him here every moment.' "That was the beginning. I fancied it was a change that the physician would soon overrule for good, and I was only anxious, not alarmed." "What did the doctor say?" "He said but little. I did not question him so closely as I might have done. In the morning I saw her fever was still high, but I had no suspicion of danger. The physician asked for something that would compel me to go down stairs with him to procure. I chatted with him lightly until we were in the sitting-room, when he closed the door behind me and said: I only asked for that in order to get you out of the room. Your wife is very sick.' My heart stopped beating for a moment. I did not thoroughly understand what he said, but his manner frightened me. 'You do not mean to say she is dangerously sick?' I said. 'Yes, she is dangerously sick.' My God, the whole world seemed to drop away from me! You may think you know just how you would feel if placed there, but-you don't. The imagination of man cannot picture it, and nothing I could say now would be able to make you realize it. Every prop, every plan in life was as if suddenly taken away. "You remember Mary?" I remembered her well. "I had been married eight years; we had grown together; we had adapted ourselves to each other. She had studied me and knew me better, much better, than I knew myself. Our lives were as the life of one. We read the same books, loved the same people, enjoyed the same fancies, and were absolutely one. My future necessarily included her as every man's must take in his wife, but in a larger sense it was made up of her. She had not only been all that a wife could be to the man she loved, but she had brought good things out of me that I never supposed I possessed till then. But here were the doctor's words sounding a knell in my ears, and his manner was far more serious than his words. 'She is not going to die?' I asked, hoping that the direct question would compel an answer in the negative, but he only said, She is dangerously sick.' 'What is it?' I asked. 'Blood poisoning.' 'Is that so terribly dangerous?' 'Yes.' 'They recover some times, don't they?' 'Occasionally a woman recovers, yes.' 'What am I to do?' 'You had better send for her parents.' Was it so bad as that? All else he had said did not strike the iron so deep as this did. My impulse was to fly back to her, take her in my arms, and defy death. But, no; I must not alarm her: he said he would be back in a few hours, and nothing but harm could come of exciting her then. I telegraphed for her people; I sat beside her night and day. I saw her fade away; I saw her die. Here he broke down. I begged him not to continue then, but he said it was a relief to tell me all, my wife and myself having loved her. "I don't know much about the coming of our friends," he went on. "I paid no thought to them. Mary seemed to look upon their being here as a matter of course. I could not tell her she was going away. When I saw her after she was told, she only said, Poor Tom!' and kissed me. She seemed to glide away from this world into the other as a night breaks into morning. Once she said, Tell the baby about me,' and the last words she spoke were her whispered 'Poor little baby!' "Life must have looked dark to you." "It did not look either dark or light; I saw nothing. Life suddenly came to a standstill. What was ahead had no hope in it, and the past was only a memory. They thought the baby would interest me, but for some time I hated her. But for her, I thought, Mary would be here beside me. Mary's mother stayed with me for awhile but finally I was left alone with servants." "You had to look after your business, more or less, I suppose?" "Yes, even in the saddest hours business matters were forced under my notice. It made me angry to see how persistently dollars and cents pushed themselves into the house of mourning, yet so long as I had the business I could not get away from it. Here in the store I bought and sold pretty much as I had before; very few who met me knew of my trouble, and for this I was thankful though occasionally thoughtless remarks cut me to the quick. My baby gradually, too, claimed more of my attention. I had to be both father and mother to the little thing and devote myself to her. But, O, the long nights when one can do nothing but think! Then you live your life over; recall each word and look of the lost, and torture yourself with the 'might-have-beens.' Morning never comes too soon-after such a night." "Has the baby got along well?" "Splendidly. I have studied nursing bottles, and foods, and patent tubes, and colic drinks until I am a capital nurse; but she has grown finely." "How old is she?" "Fifteen months!" Fifteen months! I had not thought Mary had been so long dead. A picture of her came before me; so gentle; so kind of word and manner; so pure in thought; so unassuming; so full of love to all the world. Next to my wife I had loved her, and my wife had never tired of sounding her praises. To have lost such a wife! These thoughts ran through my mind as my friend was speaking, and I had before me a picture of his desolate hearthstone, and of his still more desolate life. "I intended to have written you before this," he said, "I expect I have a surprise in store for you-" Just then a clerk opened the office door. "Did I not tell you I was not to be disturbed?" Tom asked, sharply. "Yes, sir; but your wife is outside" "Your what?" I asked. "That's just what I was going to tell you," said Tom, rather stutteringly but jumping up, as if glad to end the interview; "I'm married again. Come out and let me introduce you to my wife.-William H. Maher.