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?”