One Man in His Time

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"Oh, Father, Father!" cried Patty, flinging her arms about his neck; and then over again like a frightened child, "Father, Father!"

He patted her head with a large consoling hand. "There, there, daughter," he returned gently. "A little thing like that won't come between you and me."

With his arm still about her, he drew her slowly to the bedside, and stood looking down on the dying woman and the old cripple, who hovered over her with the stained towel in her hand.

"I don't even know her name," he said, and immediately afterward, "She must have had a hell of a life!" Though there was a wholesome pity in his voice, it was without the weakness of sentimentality. He had done what he could, and he was not the kind to worry over events which he could not change. For a few minutes he stood there in silence; then, because it was impossible for his energetic nature to remain inactive in an emergency, he exclaimed suddenly, "The doctor ought to be here!" and turning away from the bed, went rapidly across the room and through the half open door into the hall.

Outside the darkness was dissolving in a drab light which crept slowly up above the roofs of the houses; and while they waited this light filled the yard and the room and the passage beyond the door which Gideon Vetch had not closed. Far away, through the heavy boughs of the ailantus tree, day was breaking in a glimmer of purple-few birds were twittering among the leaves. Along the high brick wall a starved gray cat was stealing like a shadow. Drawing her evening wrap closer about her bare shoulders, Corinna realized that it was already day in the street.

"She's gone," said the old hunchback, in a crooning whisper. Her twisted hand was on the arm of the dead woman, which stretched as pallid and motionless as an arm of wax over the figured quilt. "She's gone, and she never knew that he had come." With a gesture that appeared as natural as the dropping of a leaf, she pressed down the eyelids over the expressionless eyes. "Well, that's the way life is, I reckon," she remarked, as an epitaph over the obscure destiny of Mrs. Green.

"Yes, that's the way life is," repeated Corinna under her breath. Already the old cripple had started about her inevitable ministrations: but when Corinna tried to make Patty move away from the bedside, the girl shook her head in a stubborn refusal.

"I am trying to believe it," she said. "I am trying to believe it, and I can't." Then she looked at them calmly and steadily. "I want to think it out by myself," she added. "Would you mind leaving me alone in here for just a few minutes?"

Though there was no grief in her voice—how could there be any grief, Corinna asked herself?—there was an accent of profound surprise and incredulity, as of one who has looked for the first time on death. Standing there in her spring-like dress beside the dead woman who had been her mother, Corinna felt intuitively that Patty had left her girlhood behind her. The child had lived in one night through an inner crisis, through a period of spiritual growth, which could not be measured by years. Whatever she became in the future, she would never be again the Patty Vetch that Corinna and Stephen had known.

Yes, she had a right to be alone. Beckoning to the old woman to follow her, Corinna went out softly, closing the door after her.