Part 48 (1/2)
”But the daisies and pinks all turned to weeds,” she went on, waiting a little, ”when we picked 'em. An' the sunny place--has been always behind me, and the dark before me. Oh, if I was only there--in the sun--where the pinks and daisies are!”
”You mustn't talk so, Mattie! Think about your children! You ain't sorry y'had them? They've been a comfort to y'? You ain't sorry you had 'em?”
”I ain't glad,” was the unhesitating reply of the failing woman; and then she went on, in growing excitement: ”They'll haf to grow old jest as I have--git bent and gray, an' die. They ain't be'n much comfort to me: the boys are like their father, and Julyie's weak. They ain't no happiness--for such as me and them.”
She paused for breath, and Mrs. Ridings, not knowing what to say, did better than speak. She fell to stroking the poor face and the hands, getting more restless each moment. It was as if Matilda Fletcher had been silent so long, had borne so much without complaint, that now it burst from her in a torrent not to be stayed. All her most secret doubts and her sweetest hopes seemed trembling on her lips or surging in her brain, racking her poor, emaciated frame for utterence. Now that death was sure, she was determined to rid her bosom of its perilous stuff.
Martha was appalled.
”I used to think--that when I got married I'd be perfectly happy; but I never have been happy sence. It was the beginning of trouble to me. I never found things better than they looked; they was always worse. I've gone further an' further from the suns.h.i.+ny meadow, an' the birds an'
flowers--and I'll never git back to 'em again, never!” She ended with a sob and a low wail.
Her face was horrifying with its intensity of pathetic regret. Her straining, wide-open eyes seemed to be seeing those sunny spots in the meadow.
”Mattie, sometimes when I'm asleep I think I am back there ag'in--and you girls are there--an' we're pullin' off the leaves of the wild sunflower--'rich man, poor man, beggar man'--and I hear you all laugh when I pull off the last leaf; and then I come to myself--and I'm an old, dried-up woman, dyin'--unsatisfied!”
”I've felt that way a little myself, Matildy,” confessed the watcher, in a scared whisper.
”I knew it, Mattie; I knew you'd know how I felt. Things have been better for you. You ain't had to live in an old log house all your life, an' work yourself to skin an' bone for a man you don't respect nor like.”
”Matildy Bent, take that back! Take it back, for mercy sake! Don't you dare die thinkin' that--don't you dare!”
Bent, hearing her voice rising, came to the door, and the wife, recognizing his step, cried out:
”Don't let him in! Don't! I can't bear him--keep him out; I don't want to see him ag'in.”
”Who do you mean? Not Joe?”
”Yes! Him!”
Had the dying woman confessed to murder, good Martha could not have been more shocked. She could not understand this terrible revulsion in feeling, for she herself had been absolutely loyal to her husband through all the trials which had come upon them.
But she met Bent at the threshold, and, closing the door, went out with him into the summer kitchen, where the rest of the family were sitting.
A gloomy silence fell on them all after the greetings were over. The men were smoking; all were seated in chairs tipped back against the wall.
Joe Bent, a smallish man, with a weak, good-natured face, asked, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper:
”How is she, Mis' Ridings?”
”She seems quite strong, Mr. Bent. I think you had all better go to bed; if I want you, I can call you. Doctor give me directions.”
”All right,” responded the relieved man. ”I'll sleep on the lounge in the other room. If you want me, just rap on the door.”
When, after making other arrangements, Martha went back to the bedroom, she was startled to hear the sick woman muttering to herself, or perhaps because she had forgotten Martha's absence.
”But the shadows on the meadow didn't stay; they pa.s.sed on, and then the sun was all the brighter on the flowers. We used to string sweet-williams on spears of gra.s.s--don't you remember?”
Martha gave her a drink of the opiate in the gla.s.s, adjusted her on the pillow, and threw open the window, even to the point of removing the screen, and the gibbous moon flooded the room with light. She did not light a lamp, for its flame would heat the room. Besides, the moonlight was sufficient. It fell on the face of the sick woman till she looked like a thing of marble--all but her dark eyes.