Mrs. Holder sank daily. Her tongue was silent now, save for murmurs of discontent or chiding, for her strength did not permit of much speech; but her eyes shone balefully as they followed Myron's figure about the room; and sometimes, when Myron bent over her, their depths were lighted by malignant mirth, for her thoughts were turned to that little plot in the graveyard where two tiny pine stakes stood now, marking a new boundary.
The day the first snow fell, Mrs. Holder's mind, hitherto fixed solely upon her sorrows and Myron's shame, began to wander. She too, like her dead son, began to speak of England, but not so sweetly as he. Old bits of village scandal, flashes of old spites against this one or that, the expression of old dislikes, broke from her lips with painful force, together with reflections upon household affairs and daily needs, which told that she was in spirit back amid the old manners and the old people.
One day Myron watched her fall asleep, and then crept out to the kitchen to steal a look at the boy, who was also sleeping. She returned in an instant, but in that time a change had come to her grandmother's bewildered brain. She was awake again, and her eyes met Myron's with cruel scorn, as she paused involuntarily upon the threshold of the bedroom; it was an expression that spoke not only of dislike, but loathing, fury, hatred. Myron would have approached to replace the coverlets that were falling from the couch, but her grandmother grew furious if she advanced a step.
"Out of my sight, Myron Kind!" she cried. "Out wi' ye! What? Ye'll follow my son within his own doors, to win him? Out, you! Go—ou—out——"
Myron retreated, seeing her grandmother was confusing her with the memory of her mother. Thrice she tried to enter, and thrice withdrew before the rage that seemed to shake the sick woman's frail form so cruelly. Then, feeling she must have aid, Myron hurried to the street, and going to the nearest house, which happened to be Mrs. Warner's, knocked at the door.
"Will you come over?" she said, when Mrs. Warner answered her knock. "Grandmother's out of her head; she thinks I'm my mother, and won't let me go near her."
"Poor old woman!" said Mrs. Warner, catching at a clean white apron. "Poor old woman! You've made her life a burding to her between you, I'll be bound."
In a few moments they were in the cottage again, and Mrs. Warner installed herself in the sickroom, somewhat disconcerted because Mrs. Holder persisted in calling her "Bet," but delighted that circumstances had brought her to the front at such a time, for Mrs. Warner was one of the matrons of the village who, not yet attained to the elect, like Mrs. Deans, Mrs. White and Mrs. Wilson, was yet far in advance of the young wives in experience, and thought herself quite capable of sustaining any responsibility.
To be present and assisting at the coming of a life or the passing of a soul was the highest excitement and most precious pleasure these women knew; but this was a height to be attained only after many years of wifehood. And what novitiate of suffering experience—years, knowledge—might fitly prepare for these mysteries! The taking up and laying down of the burden, the beginning and the ending of the spinning—for, from our first moments, our hands are bound to the loom; we must weave our own webs, but Fate doles out the thread and Circumstance dyes the fabric, not as we will, but as Destiny designs, and Death spares no pattern, however lovely, but stops the shuttle when our reel of thread is spun.
By what holy purification, by what fastings, by what soul-searchings may we prepare to enter Nature's holy of holies? Surely, ere entering the meanest hut of clay and wattles wherein life springs or withers, we should put the shoes from off our feet.