Was it Heaven? Or Hell?
By Mark Twain
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 practicing 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 practice 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 heartbreakingly 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.
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Chapter VI
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