He saw the excitement and helplessness of the doctor. Once Winnie's eyelids seemed to twitch. Then Laurence leaned forward with a curious unconscious eagerness. He asked for only one thing. He wanted to know that Winnie was dead. Stealthily and suspiciously, he watched the corpse, hating the small relaxed body that had tortured him with its suffering. He wanted to know that there was no more pain.
PART IV
Mrs. Farley had taken the baby, with its crib, into the nursery. She was seated in a low rocker, crying by the nursery fire, when May woke up.
Roused from sleep by her grandmother's sobs, May saw Mrs. Farley, with trembling lips that seemed withered by grief, lifting her head and swaying her thin body, one knotted hand clutched to her breast as if in unendurable pain.
"What's the matter, Grandma Farley?" May asked when she could endure the mystery no longer. She was like an inquisitive little animal, expecting to be beaten, but determined to gain its end.
Mrs. Farley pretended not to have heard. She was ashamed because she did not know how to explain her suffering to the child.
"Is—is anybody sick, Grandmother? Is Mamma worse?" May asked again with piping persistence. She saw the crib and some vagueness in it curiously agitated. "What's that?" she said excitedly.
Mrs. Farley rose stiffly, her figure half black, and half shining, against the firelight. Her spectacles glinted where they were fastened on her untidy flannel waist. Her old black skirt was glossed green where the fireshine caught in its folds. The gray down on her cheek glistened like a mist. Separate strands of her hair were threads of metal, hot and bright on her head.
She turned and looked at May, a small vague figure across the room in the white bed. May's eyes, with their dilated pupils, were quick even in the shadow.
Mrs. Farley fumbled her hands painfully along the folds of her skirt. "Go to sleep! Go to sleep, child!" she said in a voice harsh with fear.