"If I hadn't come along just then," she said placidly, as she covered him decently with his coat, "you'd have been drownded. Took a cramp, I reckon?"
"All I remember is taking a swim and sinking, mother. I am very much obliged to you, and can get along very well, I think."
"If you want any help, just say so," she answered. "When you get dressed my house is a mile up the road, and the road is a mile from here. I can give you a cup of tea or warm milk, and welcome."
"I'll go after a while," said he, "and then I'll be able to thank you still better for a very great service, mother."
She smiled at the affectionate title, and went her way. He became weak all at once, and for a while could not dress. The long bath had soothed his mind, and now distressed nature could make her wants known. Hunger, soreness of body, drowsiness, attacked him together. He found it pleasant to lie there and look at the sun, and feel too happy to curse it as before. The loom had done working, Penelope was asleep. The door seemed forever shut on the woman known as Sonia, who had tormented him long ago. The dead should trouble no one living. He was utterly weary, sore in every spot, crushed by torment as poor Tim Hurley had been broken by his engine. This recollection, and his lying beside the pool as Tim lay beside the running river, recalled the Monsignor and the holy oils. As he fell asleep the fancy struck him that his need at that moment was the holy oils; some balm for sick eyes and ears, for tired hands and soiled feet, like his mother's kisses long ago, that would soothe the aching, and steal from the limbs into the heart afterwards; a heavenly dew that would aid sleep in restoring the stiffened sinews and distracted nerves. The old woman came back to him later, and found him in his sleep of exhaustion. Like a mother, she pillowed his head, covered him with his clothes, and her own shawl, and made sure that his rest would be safe and comfortable. She studied the noble young head, and smoothed it tenderly. The pitiful face, a terrible face for those who could read, so bitterly had grief written age on the curved dimpled surface of youth, stirred some convulsion in her, for she threw up her arms in despair as she walked away homeward, and wild sobs choked her for minutes.
He sat on the kitchen porch of her poor home that afternoon, quite free from pain. A wonderful relief had come to him. He seemed lifted into an upper region of peace like one just returned from infernal levels. The golden air tasted like old wine. The scenes about him were marvelous to his eyes. His own personality redeemed from recent horror became a delightful thing.
"It is terrible to suffer," he said to Martha Willis. "In the last five days I have suffered."
"As all men must suffer," said the woman resignedly.
"Then you have suffered too? How did you ever get over it, mother?"
She did not tell him, after a look at his face, that some sorrows are indelible.