"Well, then, I will stop." There was an uplifted, heroic expression on Amelia's face. "I'll stop. I'll never leave you, mum—not till the breath goes out of my body, not till I'm a corpse in my coffin, not even for the butcher's young man, who was only a-sayin' yesterday as how I had the finest figger he'd ever come across. I'll work for you till I drops. I'll just ignore your father, mum. Oh, mum, if everybody was as gentle and perlite and soft spoken as you I'd die for 'em." And flinging herself upon her knees, she wept against the Liberty sofa blanket, while I surreptitiously stroked her cap, there being no hair visible to stroke.
CHAPTER XVI
FOREBODINGS
I am very weary. In the old days, before my accident, it was my boast that I was never tired. Perhaps the exertion of conciliating Peter, of trying to keep the peace between him and Amelia, has been too much for me these sultry days. I know not. But I do know that I am always tired. The sort of tiredness which makes me say, "Go away, Amelia," when she brings my hot water, and lays my tea-gown and brush and comb on the bed, and the long arduous task of being dressed lies before me. "Leave me for another hour, please." And of course she argues and says the water will go cold; and I tell her I prefer it so, closing my eyes wearily to show that the discussion is finished.
She surveys me, I know, in surprise. How can I be tired when I do absolutely nothing but lie still, when she is quite fresh after doing the whole work of the universe? "Amelia, there is a weariness of the spirit which is greater than that of the flesh. You cannot understand this. A weariness which leads you to no other desire but that of lying quite still with your eyes closed, which makes you regard the simple act of combing out your own hair as tantamount to one of the Herculean labours. You would almost prefer its being tangled to going through the exertion of getting it straight. That you would like to disentangle it for me, I know, but I shudder at the very thought. You are kind, but you don't understand how very tired I am. I want to rest a little longer."
Even the prospect of being under the apple tree, in the proximity of my friends the ants, doesn't tempt me. The dressing has to be got through first. It hurts—the lifting from the bed to the couch—though Amelia is very tender. It jars—that being wheeled from the hall on to the step. I want to be without steps and doors, and corners and turnings and sudden descents. I want to be on a gentle, inclined plane—on a soft, billowy cloud, on wings of thistledown. I am tired of my body. It is troublesome and aching. I would gladly have done with it to-day. Oh, that I could step out of it and into a new, whole, strong body—radiant and beautiful—for Dimbie's sake.
It is hard that these bodies have to get so tired before we have done with them. God sends this weariness, I suppose, to make the passing easier. I am thinking of Aunt Letitia now. She has gone, she has done with the world, she knows what is behind the veil.
Dimbie says she just slept herself away. She was conscious almost to the last, but was too tired even to eat a grape. Then she fell asleep.
Dimbie will be coming home now, but—not for four days. Four days seem a long time in which to bury a very tired, little, old lady. What am I saying? Am I growing selfish? "Forgive me, Aunt Letitia. I will not grudge Dimbie to you at the last, when you have done so much for him." And the time will pass, for mother and Peter are still here, and one cannot be dull when Peter is in the neighbourhood.