CHAPTER VII.
With the unfolding of the willow-buds at the edge of the marshes, and the high, warm sun piercing the March winds, came a change to the Swamp Farm. When every growing thing was stirring into life, happy in its blindness to the rigors of seed-time and harvest and the burdens incident to its later family life, Mary found that her battle was nearing the end. The world was very dear to her too; the oldest and most enduring of human hopes, the possibilities of her children, was beginning to promise the things she had dreamed of—and she wanted to live. But one day she crumpled up like a wilted leaf over a dress she was making for Jean’s commencement, and Billy put her to bed and ’phoned the specialist.
“There’s nothing I can do,” was the hopeless response.
“There must be. I’ll meet you,” came back over the wires in a voice sharp and hard. And the specialist came.
It was Billy’s first experience of coming up against a situation where he was absolutely powerless. He blamed himself that he had been too blind to see it coming, that he had ever left
her to take alone the hardships and worries that made such a large part of the life of the desolate place. He unburdened these confessions to the specialist with shame and bitterness.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” the doctor said, “and there’s nothing you can do now, except to make the waiting easier. I’m just as helpless as you are. It was too late to do anything even when she came to me first. To have saved her I should have been here years ago, when her last child was born.”
Billy went back to the day whose details would always haunt him, when his angry little soul had cried out against it all—but there was no room for the bitterness in his heart now—only a cold, gripping dread, a dread for her, for the suffering and the heart-break of the leave-taking. The thought of going out was something that, in his own young, physical courage, he could not take philosophically.
“Will she suffer?” he asked.
“The worst of her suffering is over. Kept it hidden pretty bravely, hasn’t she?”
“Does she know?”
“She knew when she left my office that it couldn’t be very long. She hasn’t let it shake her grip of herself yet, and she won’t. After all, there comes a time when none of us can hold life for a minute; the one thing we can do, is to make
it as good as we can for the people we live with while we have them.”
And then the old troublesome hate came back savagely. Billy knew that as long as he lived he would have hard memories to fight. When he was alone he waited miserably outside the room wondering how he could go to her, but as usual she understood and called him.
“I just wondered,” she said, “if you would take Jean’s dress to the dressmaker, so she can have it finished in time. I think I’d better not try to sew for a while, and I wouldn’t like her to be disappointed.”
So the days went on without a word of what was to come. Auntie Brown took up her residence in the house. Dan accepted the situation with stoical resignation while he was at home. He couldn’t feel that it was as serious as the rest supposed, but he made an unprecedented attempt at kindness. In spite of his assumed optimism, he had a sinking feeling that something which had contributed indispensably to the background of his life was going to be taken away, and the whole picture would be thrown out of balance. He kept away from home a little more than usual, explaining to his friends in pathetic lapses of despondency that he had to get away to get his mind off things.
But Billy stayed at home constantly. He could always be found within call of the house, and
notwithstanding his young terror of the inevitable, managed to maintain the kindest sort of cheerfulness in his mother’s presence.
Her own fortitude puzzled him. Here and there she dropped many little suggestions for the years to come, but she never spoke of leaving them. Then one day she gave him her philosophy, pointing it out to him on the worn page of a Bible—“If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? And if in the land of peace wherein thou trustedst, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?”
Billy had never heard the quotation. It struck him as pretty strong thinking, a real man’s philosophy for every day living—something he wouldn’t have expected to find in the Bible. He handed the book back soberly, but without a word; he didn’t know what to say. He was not sufficiently sure of the theories so popular with students making their elementary dip into the sciences, to be irreverent, but the Bible opened for discussion on week days embarrassed him.
His mother watched him anxiously, then taking courage said:
“You won’t think I’m preaching to you? I know I can’t understand how a young man looks at things, and I’m not questioning how you feel—but I just hope you’ll think about it. You’ve had a lot of hard things already; there may be more
ahead, and I’m afraid for you—not that I think you’d fail where any other man wouldn’t. I feel very safe about you in things that most mothers have to worry about—but it’s too hard for any one to hold out alone. You’ll think about it?”
Billy turned down the leaf by way of assurance. It was the best he had to offer.
A few days later she left them. The turn came suddenly. A nurse was brought down from the city, and with this professional help in charge Dan said good-bye awkwardly each morning and drove off; the strain of things at home made him nervous. It was Billy who stayed day and night within hearing of the room, whose awkward boyish care astonished the nurse with its gentleness and forethought, and it was Billy who steadied the spent, trembling soul in its last great weariness.
All day he had watched the tired eyes closing wearily, only to return with troubled anxiety to Jean, and he had always assured her that he would not forget her plans for the little sister. Then, as the mists began to come over, she looked up again, with an effort, searching for something.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“Where—is your father?”
It was the old, human cry of loneliness, and Billy realized as he had never done before what she had been starving for through all the years. Whatever Dan might be to anyone else, to her
he was the person she had lived for first; she wanted him now and no one knew where to find him. Unless by chance he returned in the next few minutes it would be too late. Even now, when he had not considered the hours precious enough to wait with her, she was anticipating his need of her, thinking ahead for him, with the pure maternal love that rises above personal considerations. Painfully she left her last request with Billy.
“You’ll try to forget ... to think of him as I do?”
And Billy promised. He would have promised anything, and having made a promise he knew he would keep it, whether it seemed impossible now or not.
Then the frail little form settled down close against him, and with the weariness of a hard day ended, the last light flickered and went out.
Three days later, when it was all over, and they had come back to the empty house, when Jean had cried herself to sleep and Billy could go out alone to think, Ruth Macdonald came. She had seen the announcement and had come at once, but when she reached the churchyard everyone had gone, so she came to the house and found Billy alone behind the mat of vines screening the little wooden porch. There was a hardness in his set face, the traces of a fierce battle going on
inside. He was still trying to overcome the hate that possessed him.
“It isn’t that she had to go,” he said, bitterly; “it’s the kind of life she had.”
Ruth didn’t say anything. She looked away for a while, then she looked back, and there was a compassion in her misty eyes that Billy had never hoped to receive again, since his mother had gone. And somehow the hardness toward his father and life in general began to melt. He leaned against the wooden rail with his face covered, and Ruth listened silently to the dryest, hardest sobs she had ever heard, listened until it wasn’t in her nature to wait any longer. For the hour he was only a broken-hearted boy and the mother instinct was strong in her. She bent over him as she would to comfort a suffering child, and ran her slim, supple hand through his hair. And because Billy couldn’t speak just then he covered the hand with his own and held it there to show his gratitude. Beyond that he was unmoved, but the girl was startled by a quick, hot rush through her young body. She wormed her hand loose and looked over the fields for a minute away from his stare of bewilderment. After that she was herself again. But long after Billy was asleep that night she lay awake, trying to smother in her pillow a torrent of hard, racking little sounds that would not be kept back.