“Oh, I had hoped to find you better, and now you look like this!” Bertha’s tone was shocked, for no one had told her of the change in Eunice, and she had not seen here for weeks.
“The doctor says that I shall get better if I try hard enough; but I suppose it is the indolence of my nature revolting against hard work, for it seems too much trouble to struggle on trying to get better. Death looks so easy and pleasant, just getting a little weaker every day and then dropping to sleep at the last, like a child that is too tired to play any longer,” said Eunice, and she looked so white and worn, that Bertha thought she was actually dying then.
But instead of words of grief, or even of resignation, a torrent of reproaches rose to the lips of Bertha, and were uttered through an irresistible impulse, cruel though they must have sounded at the time.
“Oh, you are selfish, most dreadfully selfish, to want to die and leave us all just when we need you so much! I have no friend outside my own people except you, and I cannot do without you!” she wailed. “And think how dreadful it will be for your brother when he comes home, to find no one to give him a welcome. Oh, it is not like you to think of yourself first and not to mind what becomes of other people!”
Great tears came into the eyes of Eunice and rolled unchecked down her face. “I don’t want to be selfish,” she said meekly, “but I am so tired, that I thought other people could get on without me somehow. And you could comfort my brother, Bertha, if you would, and make him the happiest man in the world.”
“No, I couldn’t, really, I couldn’t—oh, don’t speak of it!” cried Bertha distressfully, turning very red in the face.
“Are you sure?” asked Eunice, and there was such a world of wistful entreaty in the eyes of the sick woman, that Bertha turned her head away from a fear that she might be drawn into giving promises impossible to fulfil.
“I am quite, quite sure. Oh, please dear, do not ever speak of it to me again—it is too dreadful!” burst out Bertha, with tremendous emphasis.
“Is there anyone else?” persisted Eunice.
An indignant denial rose to the lips of Bertha and stopped there, for before her eyes rose the picture of a grey heaving sea, a rising tide, cruel black rocks, and a small boat so wedged that its occupant could not get it off the rocks. But she never could recall with any vividness the face of the man she had rescued, that is, she could not see it so clearly that she could be sure of knowing it again. At the time when the wheat fired, she had felt quite sure that the man who came along with the Smiths to help fight the fire had been the man whom she had helped, but many times since then she had told herself that there was no real certainty in her mind about the matter.