Now that no further action was possible, Elizabeth sat with her hands clasped, her teeth set, and her eyes looking into vacancy, numbed beyond words, asking no questions and making no complaints. Silas’s heart beat with an anguish of sympathy. He stopped at his own house a moment to tell Liza Ann that he would come back for her within the hour, and still Elizabeth gave no sign of realizing what was going on about her.
At last a terrible thought took hold of Silas, and he pulled up his team, which was sweating heavily.
“You ain’t fit t’ go, Lizzie. You ain’t fit t’ go, child. I’m goin’ t’ take you back home.” He began to turn the horses’ heads toward home, and then stopped for her wandering wits to gather.
“Why, oh, why don’t you hurry?” Elizabeth exclaimed when she realized that they were standing still.
The old man’s heart was torn with pity, and it was in the voice of a mother that he addressed her.
“You ain’t fit t’ go,” he repeated. “I’m going t’ take you back home.” There was a white look about her mouth that frightened him.
The girl grasped his arm with fingers that closed with a grip like a drowning person.
“I couldn’t see her when she was living—surely I can see her dead.” Then with a wail, “Oh, no—no, not dead! Oh, my God!”
She sobbed in a dry sort of way that contracted Silas’s throat to witness, and left the old man almost as undone as herself, and without further argument he drove on to Nathan Hornby’s desolated home, where he lifted her tenderly down from the high seat, with a mist before his eyes that blurred her image till it was unrecognizable, and stood watching her go up the path.
A woman met her at the door, but she did not know who, and brushed past her hurriedly and ran into the kitchen, where she could see Nathan Hornby sitting with his head on his arms beside the kitchen table.