Possession

by Louis Bromfield

To one of Hattie’s nature there is consolation in the possession of the dead. The grim small tasks, the polite and empty phrases of condolence, the coming and going of those who care for the dead ... all this empty hubbub and commerce serves in a fashion to conceal and break the anguish of loss. But for Hattie there were not even these things. She was left alone with Gramp in a flat which, though it had seemed empty before, now achieved a desolation beyond all belief. She (who had lived only in her children) had no friends about her; the very flat was not in the proper sense a home, such as the house in Sycamore Street had been. It was a barren, inhuman cave occupied before her by a procession of strangers which, when she left, would again close over the brief years of her tenancy. She found herself alone save for that ancient man her father-in-law, in a strange city, without even the body of her son for a bitter consolation.

So this woman, who had lived her life so richly ... a life florid and overflowing with sentiment, a life that churned and raced along in an overwhelming current of vitality, achieved in the face of tragedy a calm and a dignity which she had never shown before. She understood, in the primitive depths of her nature, that this truth which she must face was the final one, from which there was no appeal. Always before there had been some hope ahead, some chance of turning events by a vast energy and a crude wilfulness to her own ends. There was nothing now ... nothing save a few old clothes, some books and the Bible she had given him on his tenth birthday. To these she clung with the tenacity of a savage, and they were pitiful remnants to a woman whose love demanded the very bodies of her children.

For Hattie there were none of those shades of grief and joy which are the lot of those more completely civilized. She had no capacity for seeing herself, or, like Ellen, for finding in the death of Fergus an illumination which served in a mysterious fashion to light up the long progression of her life. In her sorrow, Hattie no longer even pitied herself; and this, of course, may have been the secret of her dignity. Hattie, the martyr, who bore her cross and flung herself before her family like the Pope before the Visigoths, no longer existed. In her place there was a strong, almost grim woman, who was silent and did not complain.

Nor had she, like the more civilized, the pleasure of books and of philosophic reflection. Her life since the very beginning had been far too active for such things; and now, when at last there was time, when she had no one to care for save the independent old man, she could not read, she could not reflect. Books were poor pale things by comparison with the ferocious activity of life itself. There were no stockings to darn, no one for whom she might make meringues, no dog to place upon his mat before locking up the house. (To the apartment there was but one door and it locked of itself. It was, properly speaking, no real home at all.) So she came to invent things for herself to do. She lingered over her work and took (though she was rich now) to such pale tasks as embroidery and knitting, only to find that the objects of her labor, having been created for no real purpose, accumulated dismally in the drawers and cupboards.

She had letters both from Ellen and Robert which she kept in the family Bible to read over and over again; and sometimes a shameful, bitter thought crept into the recesses of her active mind. It was a terrible thought, which she thrust hastily aside as impious and touched with blasphemy; but it returned nevertheless again and again to torment her. She thought, “If only it had been Robert instead of Fergus!” (Robert who was so steadfast and reliable, who already was the youngest captain of his division). She was proud of him too, but in a different way. She could not say how....

The awful thought would not die. She would have given Robert to keep Fergus, though in the solitude of the empty flat she sometimes cried out, “It is not true. I could not think such a horrible thing!”

The squabbling with Gramp came quietly to an end, though neither of them ever made any allusion to the change. They lived together for the most part in silence but the old man ceased to torment and worry her. And on her side without ever knowing why, she came to treat him in a new way, almost to cherish and protect him like some brittle piece of glass, as all that remained of the old life. She even made for him little delicacies and had him to eat at the table with her. At such times they sat, awkwardly, and without conversation, each perhaps abashed by the weakness that lay in this strange truce.

In the long empty days there came to Hattie a mysterious sense of having turned a corner, of having stepped from one room into another. The door between had, she knew, closed forever, though she did not understand why. She had come now into the borders of Gramp’s country. She was growing old and so she came to understand a little the old man’s vast indifference.

Before he sailed, Robert, dressed in his captain’s uniform, neat and spotless, every button properly arranged, came to bid farewell. She could feel certain of him. There would be no mad exploits, no wild surges of temperament ending in disaster, no idle heroics undertaken for their own selfish thrill. These things Robert would never understand.

As he sat talking to her (trying bravely in his solid, unspectacular way to take the place of Fergus) he seemed square and massive and eternal as her father, old Jacob Barr, had been. There was reassurance in the snub nose, the solid jaw and the unruly red hair. Where Fergus had not even been able to look out for himself, she knew that this other son would care for his men with a detached and efficient thoroughness. There was nothing in the death of Fergus which could be counted as a material loss, even to herself. It was Robert who had earned money when it was most needed; it was Robert who looked out for her and stood between her and the world. It was upon men like Robert that the whole world rested; he was a foundation, the beginning and end of all order and worth. And yet.... And yet.... Even while he sat there doing his clumsy best to make up for the loss of his brother, the old wicked thought kept tormenting her.... She wanted to tear it out by its roots, to destroy it forever; but there it was, always with her.... If only it had been Robert.