Not My Will and The Light in My Window

by Francena H. Arnold

  “As soon as I can get out of here I’ll go back to college,” Eleanor told herself with a firm set to her lips. “I’ll work harder than ever. I’ll fill the days with study and work, and I’ll have my dreams to help me through the nights. I’ll manage to live. Strange how I keep on living with only a hard, cold lump instead of a heart. I suppose I’ll get used to it. I may even find happiness in my work—a real kind of happiness that will fill my time and give me peace.”

  Happiness! Once she had been happy in a different way, she reflected. But she didn’t want to be happy that way again. It hurt too much. This dead feeling was better. She didn’t feel dead like this at night, anyway, when she could go back into the memory gallery to gather courage and strength for the next day’s ordeal. Somehow she would show the world yet.

  The next afternoon Dr. Durbin and a lawyer came to Eleanor with a sheaf of papers to sign. They were surprised that she asked no questions but seemed eager to sign her name and have them go away. She wrote “Eleanor Stewart” firmly across the bottom of each document, then turned her head away and closed her eyes. It was done. The baby was no longer hers. Her last bridge was burned behind her, and her work lay ahead

  * * *

  In October, when classes resumed at the university, Eleanor registered for work once more. The leaves were red and brown and golden on the big old campus trees, but she could see only her books. She paid no attention to the clear, blue days when the smoke from burning leaves give the air an acrid tang. She never noticed the sparkling, frosty nights. She studied, studied. It would take work to make up what she had missed last spring if she were to graduate with her class. But she could do it, and then—next year—graduate medical school!

  But in a few weeks Eleanor realized that something was wrong. Her mind seemed strangely loath to take up the burden again, and the old trick of easy memorizing had slipped from her. Worst of all, the dreams did not return so easily at night.

  “I have my mind on too many things,” Eleanor rationalized. “After I get caught up with my classes and get everything under control again, I’ll relax and dream.”

  November brought gray days and dull skies, and while the campus resounded with gaily shouted plans for the Thanksgiving holidays, Eleanor’s voice was not heard. She was working. The nights were becoming things of such loneliness that she made them as short as possible by working late and getting up early. So tired was she when she finally did lie down that sleep eluded her completely. Hour after hour she lay looking at the dark ceiling, going over the day’s lectures or trying to quiet herself enough to let the dreams come again. Try as she might, she could not quite capture the mood of dreams—and she was heartsick for them.

  “I’m working too hard,” she would say, pulling her pillow restlessly into another angle. “I’ll take a day or two to rest and relax, and then I’ll find the Picture Gallery again. I’ll take four days at Thanksgiving and do nothing but dream. I’ll have Chad with me again then.”

  Relaxation does not come when called. When Thanksgiving came and Eleanor lay down to find her dreams, she was sorely disappointed. Hour by hour she could reconstruct the events of the year before, those beautiful days at the lake, but when she tried to relive them, to make Chad’s presence real again, everything faded. Sometimes she could catch a glimpse of his figure, but if she drew near and tried to see his face, it vanished.

  Then she would lie and try with all her powers to picture Chad’s face. How the hair lay back from his forehead in a golden wave. How his eyes twinkled in laughter and his lips curved in an ever-ready smile …

  “It’s no use!” Her lips trembled. “Even his face is gone from me now!”

  Swiftly she sat up and turned on the light, then began to hunt through her desk for a picture of Chad. Surely she had one! Of course most of her pictures were at the lake with her cameras, but there must be some little snapshot here.

  But there was none.

  The next day she went up to the library and asked for a copy of the yearbook of two years previous. Swiftly she turned over the shiny pages until she found a picture of Professor Merritt’s laboratory, showing the professor and his three assistants at work. One of them must be Chad, but the picture was not clear, and Eleanor felt no recognition as she looked at it. That wasn’t her Chad.

  When the Thanksgiving holiday was over, Eleanor was glad to go back to school. She studied harder than ever, hoping to get tired and to sleep, and in that sleep to find her dreams again. She did get tired. But she did not sleep.

  One night as she lay staring into the darkness trying vainly to bring Chad’s face back out of the shadows, she began to grow resentful. “Life could have been so beautiful and useful if circumstances had been different. What right did anyone have to try to control me in that way? If Chad and I could have had the money with no strings attached, we could have lived fruitfully through years and years of service. From the beginning our marriage was clouded by the shadow of that money.

  “Or if Chad hadn’t gone home that summer we still might have worked everything out. It was his visit home that stirred him up and made him dissatisfied. His mother and her prayers changed Chad—made him want to tell of our marriage—and that caused the discussion that made him leave that night. If he hadn’t been so troubled and absent-minded he might have seen the car before it hit him.”

  Eleanor now had a new line of thought. Her tortured brain began, during the long sleepless nights, to build up resentment—not against Aunt Ruth, for she was gone, but against Chad’s family, especially his mother. The resentment became a poison in her soul.

  A few days before Christmas, another note came from the farm up north—not an invitation this time, but a message of hope and cheer, a wish that the year ahead might be filled with God’s blessing. Accompanying the note was a box of homemade cookies wrapped in green tissue, tied with a red ribbon, and trimmed with a fragrant cedar spray.

  Her lips set in determination, Eleanor tore the note in two, tossed it into the wastebasket, and after a moment’s hesitation, threw the box after it.

  That night Eleanor slept, and she dreamed of Chad. But he had his back to her, and every time she drew near he ran away. He had something in his arms that cried out as he ran, and then she knew he was holding a baby—their baby! Chad had it and wouldn’t let her see it!

  Perspiration was standing out on Eleanor’s forehead when she awoke in terror. Switching on the light, she looked at the clock. Half past two. There would be no more sleep for her that night, she knew, so she took out her books and began to study.

  Later that morning Eleanor walked into the drugstore near the campus and asked for a drug she remembered buying for Aunt Ruth when the pain became too severe to be borne. A sleeping powder would ensure her getting a few hours of sleep when she became too weary at night to study any longer.

  That night Eleanor took her first dose, and was so gratified with the results that she repeated the experiment the next night, and the next. Soon the habit of taking a powder before going to bed was well established, and Eleanor now slept regularly—but was not rested. As the quarter drew to a close, she knew that her grades would be far below any she had ever before received, because even though she was doing her best, that best was not very good.

  Loneliness began to overwhelm her in the daytime too. She drew away from her classmates, afraid that in a moment of weakness she would tell the whole wretched story to a sympathetic listener.

  Then a new presence began to haunt her. It was the face of her baby.

  Sometimes when she tried to study, the little face would come between her eyes and the book. When she walked the streets in desperation, trying to evade it, it followed. There was only one place where the baby’s face did not come, and that was into Eleanor’s drugged sleep; so she began going to bed earlier and taking larger doses of the sedative. She would awaken heavy-eyed and pale in the early morning and try once more to study. But her mind refused to obey orders anymore, and when Eleanor finally wrote her
quarterly examinations, she was afraid to reread what she had written. But at last examinations were at an end.

  Eleanor was idly thumbing over back numbers of magazines, looking at pictures of babies, when a message was delivered to her. Mrs. Martin, the dean of women, wished to see Miss Eleanor Stewart in her office. In trepidation Eleanor set out.

  The dean was very kind. Surely Miss Stewart knew that her work was not up to its previous standard. Was something wrong? She did not look well. She looked tired. Since she apparently needed a rest, why not take a vacation … enter a sanitarium … travel, if possible. At any rate, it was advisable for Miss Stewart to leave school and finish later, for her own good.

  Snow was flying through the cold, sharp air when Eleanor came out of the administration building. Her thoughts in a turmoil, she turned her steps toward the lake, hardly feeling the chill wind. She, Eleanor Stewart, had been advised to leave school! She who had been the brilliant scholar, the promising bacteriologist, the benefactor of mankind, advised not to finish college!

  Along the lakeshore the wind was so strong that Eleanor could hardly hold her course; but she kept on walking until she reached a place where huge blocks of stone were piled to hold back the ceaselessly pounding breakers. Oblivious to the cold, Eleanor perched on a great slab and looked out over the gray lake. For the first time in her life, she admitted utter defeat. She had consoled herself for every loss with the thought of an all-engrossing profession in which she could excel and make the world take notice—and now that, her last solace in life, was gone.

  Why has all this happened to me? she asked herself bitterly. Is there any possible way to find peace? I don’t even ask happiness anymore—just peace enough to live on. Her eyes swept the gray expanse cheerlessly. Did she want to live? It would be so easy to go to sleep once for all in the great gray bed. Not a soul in the world would care, and at last she would find peace.

  Or would she? Yes, if death were only an eternal sleep. But then that would mean Chad was asleep. And he wasn’t. Somewhere he must surely be alive and waiting for her. Dying would mean meeting him, and she wasn’t ready. She must get ready. A sudden thought brought a glimmer of hope. Maybe if she were to do the things she should, God would let her die and go to Chad!

  A new chain of reasoning quickly formed itself in Eleanor’s mind. Perhaps the reason she had lost Chad was that she had turned her back on God, and then God took Chad from her to punish her. If she went back and undid all the wrong, perhaps God would forgive her and let her be happy again. Of course Chad was gone, and the baby was gone, but if she could just find Chad’s face and smile in her gallery of memory, if she could just hear his voice in her dreams once more, everything would be all right.

  Eleanor’s eyes sparkled hopefully as she got down from the great slab and began walking back to the campus, laying her plans as she went. First she would go to see the lawyer and tell him about her marriage. Then she would go to Chad’s mother and tell her. Next—what next? Oh, yes—she would find a little baby whose mother didn’t want it, and she would work to support it. Ruefully Eleanor realized she would have to work, as Aunt Ruth’s money would be gone. But if she could have Chad’s smile back, she would be happy scrubbing floors, if need be.

  Eleanor arrived back at her room shaking with cold, but she did not rest. She worked diligently until once more all her possessions were packed, ready to be taken away. This was the second time she had left the university suddenly. The last time she had left in despair. This time things were going to be better!

  John R. Hastings, Attorney-at-Law,” the gold letters on the door said. Eleanor pushed the door open with some trepidation, now that the moment for revealing her marriage was actually at hand.

  Mr. Hastings’s secretary, who also acted as his receptionist, looked curiously at the girl standing before her. She must be young, but she looks old, she thought. The circles under her eyes! Her clothes are nice, but it looks like she wouldn’t even care if she had them on inside out. Those gloves don’t match. She sure is nervous …

  But she merely said, “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Well, no—that is, Mr. Hastings knows me, and I’m sure he’ll see me. Just tell him Miss Eleanor Stewart is here.”

  Mentally the secretary retorted, as she rose to enter the inner office, And you’ll stay a “Miss” as long as you look like that, girlie. Why don’t you get some rest?

  In a few moments she returned. “Mr. Hastings will see you now.”

  The white-haired old lawyer rose to greet Eleanor with an outstretched hand. “Miss Stewart! I had planned to write you this very week relative to the settlement of the estate, and now you have saved me the trouble. There will be just a few formalities for you to attend to, then the money will be yours.”

  A shadow lingered in the doorway. “That will be all for now, Miss Cox,” Mr. Hastings said, and the door closed impatiently. It would have been interesting to know what this big-eyed, pale-faced girl had to do with an estate and money. But the typewriter keys began to rattle again.

  Eleanor’s heart pounded against her side as she drew in her breath to begin. It would be hard, of course, but that was part of the atonement she was making.

  “Mr. Hastings, I came up to tell you I’m not going to get any money.”

  “You what?”

  “The money isn’t rightfully mine. I came to tell you I’m not entitled to it. I … I … I’ve been married.” There! It was out.

  Dismay and consternation spread over the old gentleman’s face. “Tell me about it,” he said gently.

  In a few words Eleanor laid before him the whole story. As she talked, he shook his head occasionally but did not speak. “Is that all?” he asked.

  At length she paused. “That’s all.”

  “You know what this means?” he asked regretfully.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I am very sorry—I never had any idea—” he stammered, at a loss for words.

  “If you feel sorry for me because I am losing the money,” Eleanor said quietly, “don’t bother. I don’t care about it at all. Other things are much more important. If I have to sign any papers or anything, I’ll do it now.”

  Mr. Hastings arose and went slowly into the inmost room, while Eleanor waited listlessly. Her head ached, and her hands were cold and numb. She wished all this were over so she could go to bed and rest, rest until she wasn’t tired anymore.

  Carrying a bundle of papers, the old man returned. “This is the entire file of papers,” he said. “I will have Miss Cox prepare them, and if you care to wait you can sign them after lunch. Completion of the formalities, however, will necessarily await your birthday, ten days from now.”

  Mr. Hastings leafed through the documents again, then started at the sight of an envelope that had slipped into the folds of a larger paper.

  “The sealed envelope!” he exclaimed.

  “What is it?” asked Eleanor curiously.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the envelope, “is something your aunt gave me a week before her death. She instructed me not to open it but to keep it for you in case you had reason to claim it. I had forgotten about its existence until just now.”

  Eleanor glanced with some interest at the envelope, which bore in a dear, familiar handwriting the words “To my niece, Eleanor Stewart, in case she marries before her twenty-fifth birthday.”

  Wonderingly Eleanor tore open the missive, while Mr. Hastings looked on with interest. Eleanor read in a low voice:

  My dear Eleanor:

  I have always been fond of surprising you and am taking one more opportunity to do so. You will not receive this unless you are courageous enough to marry before you are twenty-five, in spite of the fact that, so far as you know, it will have cost you your entire fortune. Yours must be real love, not a foolish whim such as ruined my life. May God bless you, my dear. I want you to have my property regardless. Enclosed in this envelope is a new will, which will void the one that will be read after my fun
eral. Even Mr. Hastings does not know of this arrangement. May the money bring you and your husband, whom I wish I could know, only happiness.

  Love,

  Aunt Ruth

  Eleanor had become deadly pale. She handed all the papers back to the old gentleman, saying unsteadily, “I don’t understand.”

  “I do,” he said with a smile. “You are to be congratulated. Mrs. Edwards has surprised both of us. Instead of forfeiting the inheritance through your earlier marriage, this letter will give you all the property, with your Aunt’s blessing.”

  “I … could … have … had … the … money … anyway,” Eleanor said slowly to herself as the enormity of the situation dawned upon her.

  “It’s yours—every penny of it!” said Mr. Hastings.

  “But I don’t want it!”

  Mr. Hastings looked amazed. “Don’t want it?” he repeated uncomprehendingly.

  “I never want to hear of it again!”

  “Well, I can understand that you are reluctant to profit from any grief so great as that of the death of your aunt, but I believe that in time you will realize that it will be the wisest course for you to take the money and put it to good use in education, travel, and so on.”

  “Mr. Hastings,” said Eleanor, her fingers gripping the edge of his desk, “please understand me. My husband is dead. His death was brought about by a misunderstanding concerning this inheritance. The money has brought nothing but a curse into my life. I won’t have a penny of it. I won’t!”