Then, just as she was about to drive on to the stable, she observed that shadows were moving to and fro beyond the single lighted window. Though the outward aspect of the house was unchanged, there was, nevertheless, a subtle alteration in its spirit. For an instant, while she hesitated, there seemed to her an ominous message in these hurried shadows and this absence of noise. Her throat tightened, and she sprang from the buggy as the door opened and Rufus came out.
"He died a few minutes ago," he said.
A few minutes ago! "I'll never know now what he tried to tell me," she thought. "No matter how long I live, I shall never know."
[X]
After the last prayer, the earth was shovelled back into the hollow beneath the great pine in the graveyard, and the movement of the farm began again with scarcely a break in its monotony. Joshua Oakley had sacrificed his life to the land, and yet, or so it seemed to Dorinda, his death made as little difference as if a tree had fallen and rotted back into the soil. Even her own sorrow was a sense of pity rather than a personal grief.
When the neighbours had driven solemnly out of the gate, the family assembled in Mrs. Oakley's chamber and gazed through the window to the graveyard on the hill, as if they were waiting expectantly for the dead man to rise and return to his work. The only change would be, they acknowledged, that two hired labourers would grumble over a division of the toil which Joshua had performed alone and without a complaint. The farm had always belonged to Mrs. Oakley; but in order that her authority might be assured, Joshua had made a will a few months before his death and had left her the farm implements and the horses. Dissimilar as her parents had appeared to be, there was a bond between them which Dorinda felt without comprehending. This was the growth of habit, she supposed, or the tenacious clinging of happy memories which had survived the frost of experience. In his dumb way, Joshua had been proud of his wife, and Eudora had depended upon her husband for more substantial qualities than those of sentiment. He had been useful to her in the practical details of living, and she was feeling his loss as one feels the loss of a faculty. Here was another proof, Dorinda reflected, of the varied texture of life, another reminder of her folly in attempting to weave durable happiness out of a single thread of emotion.
"I don't see how we'll manage to get on without him," said Mrs. Oakley, who looked gaunt and bleached in the old mourning she had worn for her dead children.
"I reckon it means I'll have to stay on here," Rufus muttered in a tone of sullen rebellion. "I'll have to give up that job Tom Garlick promised me next winter in New York. It's darn luck, that's what I call it."
"Oh, no, you mustn't stay," Dorinda urged. "Ma and I can get on perfectly by ourselves. It won't make any difference if you go in the fall."
"You'd better take Dorinda's advice and get away, Rufus." Though Mrs. Oakley spoke in a quiet voice, her face had gone grey at the thought of losing Rufus also.