The Worn Doorstep

by Margaret Pollock Sherwood

So the big touring car was turned about, with much puffing and panting; my little iron gate was opened wide to let two men carry the poor old creature to my guest room, and I sent the others on, with such comforts as I could supply. The small boy went nibbling a cookie, the little girl with hers in her hand, too dazed to eat it. Haven't you ever seen a frightened little bird holding something in its mouth, not daring to swallow?

The village doctor and Madge and I worked for hours over the fugitive. She only looked at us with eyes that had in them all the weariness of the world since the dawn of time. There was evidently no malady; actual physical pain did not seem to be there; only overwhelming mental pain or shock that means destruction of the very forces of life. She was not unconscious, nor was she fully conscious of what was going on around her. The comfort of warm water on her body, the comfort of soothing drink she hardly realized, nor could she swallow, except with great difficulty and reluctance. Just once she stretched herself out at full length with a look of relief, and lay motionless.

I shall never know what weary ways she had trodden in her escape from the swift ruin of war, nor how in her tottering age she had escaped at all. She seemed to be one who, her life long, had walked the same peaceful paths over and over, as her forefathers had done before. Was she one of those who, driven from home and fireside, had lain down in the dust of the road, longing to die? Contagious! Heartbreak does seem contagious in these days; who shall escape? Who can wish to, when other hearts break?

Life can never bring me anything so strange, perhaps it can never bring me anything so wonderful, as this silent companionship with a soul that had almost passed. She did not understand the words I used, but she did understand that we were trying to help her; though her lips were still, her eyes followed us,—eyes full of knowledge that can not come before the last. She did not try to thank us, dwelling in some world of instinctive understanding, making one feel that the long ages of much speaking were folly. She had let go of all tangible things and was no longer aware of time or circumstance; there was no look of fear in her eyes, no look of sorrow; she was done with earth and with feeling, having neither reproaches nor regrets. She had gone beyond pain, beyond joy, beyond those simple human affections that linger to the last, to some region of ultimate peace, or of quiet beyond peace.

The falling of March rain upon the roof; sunshine, with the notes of the returning birds; the cawing of the rooks, and the soft ripple of the brook—even Madge was subdued by the majesty of it all and forgot to rail at the Kaiser, or to storm in misplaced aspirates at the Germans. A world beyond hate was with us, where it was good to be.

The end was hardly different from the days that went before; there was no motion, no outburst, only a quiet ceasing of that which had hardly been breathing. Our departing guest folded her wrinkled hands upon her breast herself, as if to save us trouble, and so I found her. Who was she? Who belonged to her? Where are the children and grandchildren who should have been gathered about her bed?

The doctor and the village nurse took charge of her; when she was ready for burial, more quiet than earth itself,—one never knows quiet until one sees it so,—I put roses beside her; one of the county ladies keeps me supplied from her conservatory. Yet I hesitated; it seemed wrong to recall in this presence any mere tangible and visible beauty, or aught from the world of things. The lovely contours and outlines, the perfume of the roses reproached me, as if I were pursuing her to bring her back to mere self, hampering her escape. With her we seemed to be swept away into some great consciousness that meant relief from individual sorrow,—sharing her rest, a repose so deep that it rested us for all the days to come.

Madge mourned over her as if it were her own mother,—I hardly know why: could it have been merely the three days of trying to care for her? Or was she touched, in some depth of her nature never reached before, by the grandeur of that loneliness?

There was a brief service in the little church on the hill, a sound of song, of praying; but nothing in the burial service could quite express the pathos of that moment when we buried some one's mother, not even knowing her name. We left her in the churchyard, within hearing of the stream, where deep shadows fall on grave after grave. This cold winter grass which grows above the other graves will soon, with the quickening of spring, cover hers also; already it is freshening, and crocuses peep out here and there.

There is no name to put on a stone at her head. It is perhaps at best folly to mark the resting-places of the dead, yet I had a feeling that no token of respect must be lacking, and I begged that an old grey tombstone, standing by the churchyard wall, a stone so old that all that was carved on it has been worn away, might be placed at her head. It has told the passing of one human soul, and shall tell that of another; in its grey, fine-worn beauty it symbolizes the vast impersonality of the end.